In the deluge of emails, instant messages, and texts generated by employees in your organization each day, it can be difficult to spot fraud — unless you know what to look for. Following our recent examination of email-specific terms and keywords, today we’re looking at social media and text messages.

In 2013, we published a blog post listing the ten most commonly flagged email terms that suggest corporate fraud. Though that post continues to rank among our most popular, the five years since it was written have seen dramatic changes in how people and organizations communicate. In the first part of this series, we focused on email. Today, we’re looking at text messages and social media.

Like our prior list, these red flags have been compiled from organizations currently utilizing the Smarsh Archiving Platform — but they also include terms and keywords revealed in litigation by real-world organizations afflicted by fraud. While none are iron-clad guarantees of fraud, money laundering, or insider trading, they’ve each been shown to indicate an increased likelihood of illicit activity. It would be wise to ensure that each is included in your organization’s lexicon.

New terms likely to be flagged in social media and text messages include:

  • Cook me up
  • Money was/is illegal
  • This is non-public
  • Material, non-public information
  • Blame freelancers
  • Expected to announce
  • Leak
  • Insider
  • Do not share
  • Earnings report
  • Shares will be downgraded
  • Is just a lie
  • Need to make money
  • Deserve to get paid
  • Top secret
  • Crisis Scenario
  • Breach
  • STL my $ (shorthand for “settle my money”)
  • SRY
  • 🙁
  • Guar (shorthand for “guarantee”)
  • delete text
  • CN TRST U
  • Compl (shorthand for “compliance”)
  • Conf (shorthand for “confidential”)
  • Imp ? (shorthand for “important question”)
  • Don’t tell
  • a crook
  • Frd (shorthand for “fraud”)

Though we already mentioned it in our prior blog, we’ve also compiled a list of platform-agnostic terms and keywords that should be flagged whenever they appear in official communications:

  • Sounds bad
  • Confidential information
  • Delete this
  • Tax haven
  • Off-shore account
  • Backdate
  • Pull earnings forward
  • Special fees
  • No inspection
  • Mitigate investment risk
  • Guaranteed to be profitable
  • No downside risk
  • Borrow money
  • Loan cash
  • Loan me money

This helpful infographic summarizes suspicious keywords and how they might be used. As you probably guessed, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. For our most frequently updated list of terms and keywords, you’ll want to visit Smarsh Central, an intuitive, comprehensive knowledge base bolstered by the unrivaled regulatory knowledge and experience of our team of experts.

In all but the smallest organizations, manually searching for these terms would take an enormous amount of time and leave gaping holes in any supervision program leaving most firms vulnerable to litigation and fines. Fortunately, Smarsh makes it easy with The Archiving Platform. With automated capture and management of messages across a wide variety of content types — including email, text, instant messages, social media, web, and more — and customizable, granular policies, flagging and reviewing messages is fast, simple, and consistent.

Crucial to your supervision team, it also won’t prove a drain on productivity. Our Supervision services include automated message assignment and escalation, issue-oriented, team-based review workflows that can be customized to your unique needs, and defensible, built-in audit trails, which simplify and streamline workflows for human supervisors. Finally, our Supervision Health Check gives your organization access to our team of policy experts who will carefully review and analyze your compliance efforts and offer insightful recommendations to help you further optimize your communications supervision program.

For more, please visit The Archiving Platform.