Be careful about who you give financial info to. Photo by damircudic/Getty Images

As the COVID-19 pandemic has grown, so has the confidence of fraudsters who are hoping to scam people out of money. A large portion of our everyday lives have moved online and onto our phones, so it's more important than ever that you know what common tricks to watch out for.

Texas Citizens Bank continually looks out for its customers, creating tip sheets that help everyone become more educated about different types of fraud, from email scammers to debit and credit card crooks.

Here, they outline four common COVID-19 schemes that are making the rounds:

1. Fake offers of info, supplies, or payments
If it sounds official and mentions COVID-19 or the CARES Act, it must be legit, right? Wrong. These websites, mobile apps, and emails with links or attachments are entirely fake. Do not open, click, or download anything sent to you — instead, go directly to the official website on your own to find the info.

2. Someone posing as a doctor or ill family member
If you get a call claiming that someone you love is ill with coronavirus — and too ill to come to the phone, at that — and needs money for treatment, don't believe it. Hang up immediately and call that family member yourself.

3. Claims that your Social Security benefits are suspended
If you receive a letter or email, no matter how official-looking, that says your SSA benefits have been suspended due to COVID-19, know that it's not true. The SSA has not suspended or reduced any benefits, pandemic or not. Be sure to report this scam to the government here.

4. Offers of COVID-19 tests and vaccines
If someone is claiming they can send coronavirus tests directly to your house, they're lying. If they claim they can do the same with a vaccine, they're really lying. You can only obtain tests at hospitals, urgent care facilities, and your doctor's office, and we're still waiting on a reliable vaccine to be approved. Until then, be extra careful about who you believe.

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Texas Citizens Bank is an independently owned, FDIC-insured bank that specializes in Houston's small and medium-sized business owners. If you have questions about financial options during coronavirus or how to keep your money safe, contact a TCB banker today at 713-948-5700.

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The do's and don'ts of using your PPP loan funds

Do This, Not That

Now that you've taken the first steps toward getting your Paycheck Protection Program loan funds, Texas Citizens Bank is here to help you stay on track by sharing important do's and don'ts about how to use them.

The staff of Texas Citizens Bank, you might recall, worked overtime in April to process $97 million in PPP loans, helping nearly 500 small Houston businesses avoid layoffs or closing their doors completely.

So you would be wise to heed their advice — even the Houston SBA District Office is using these PPP guidelines to help small businesses make the most of their loans.

DO: Use the funds for payroll and authorized expenses only
Your PPP loan is to be used for payroll costs, group healthcare expenses, and other authorized costs, such as your business mortgage expenses or rent, utilities, and interest payments on other debt.

DON'T: Use the funds for other things
Make sure you use your loan only to pay for authorized expenses. You should expect to be audited by the bank or government officials. By avoiding misuse of the funds, your loan may be fully forgivable.

DO: Be organized
Keep records of how you use your loan funds. Opening and using a separate deposit account for the PPP loan funds can make this easy and streamline any auditing process. Contact a TCB banker to find out more about business deposit accounts.

DON'T: Mix loan funds with personal assets
Again, to keep things easy to track, avoid depositing your PPP loan funds into a personal account and avoid the temptation of using the funds to pay for personal expenses.

DO: Keep the rules in mind
Remember that your PPP funds need to be used immediately for authorized costs incurred during the eight weeks immediately following the loan's origination. Also, at least 75 percent of the forgiven amounts must be used for payroll expenses during that time.

DON'T: Attempt to cheat
Unscrupulous borrowers may try to take advantage of the law's gray areas, but please don't. Again, the bank or representative from the government is likely to perform an audit. The last thing you want is to be caught in an act of fraudulent use of funds.

If you would like to download these PPP loan fund do's and don'ts as a PDF checklist, you can do so here.

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Houston-focused bank comes through with record number of vital PPP loans

PPP MVP

At the beginning of April, small businesses were allowed to begin applying for Paycheck Protection Program loans, a historic solution designed to help cover payroll, benefits, mortgage payments, and utilities.

It was a mad dash as many raced to figure out the new program, which only had an initial $349 billion allocated to the SBA for PPP loans. Every minute working on these PPP loans mattered to the Houston small business owners who applied.

Working through evenings and weekends, the staff at Texas Citizens Bank processed a staggering amount of loans in the first round, and an impressive amount of additional funds in round two.

In the impossibly small, 13-day window before round one closed, TCB processed and funded $73 million, helping 297 Houston small businesses maintain payroll and avoid layoffs. For round two, it processed $24 million, or 182 PPP loans.

"They were real heroes for many businesses," says David Gow, CEO of Gow Media (the parent company of InnovationMap). "Their team was working 'round the clock with businesses like ours to give us the best possible shot at PPP funding. I think they were one of the top banks in taking care of their clients during a very stressful window of time."

"With the help of Texas Citizens Bank and the PPP loan, we were able to get our entire team back up to their full pay the same week as funding," says Christy Lovoi of South Shore Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, who notes that the practice was having difficulty with its previous bank and switched to TCB. "While it will take some time to get back to pre-pandemic levels, the PPP loan will definitely make it much easier. The response and help from everyone at Texas Citizens Bank has been absolutely stellar."

"A large number of employees are reporting to work today and receiving a paycheck because of your outstanding efforts," added Brent Cox, vice president of member relations at the Texas Bankers Association, on LinkedIn.

TCB chairman and CEO Duncan Stewart says that the Houston community bank team arrived early, hired additional SBA experts to assist in the processing, and worked evenings and weekends to approve and process PPP loans, all in support of their local business owners and employees.

"I could not be more proud of our team and what they have accomplished in the last two weeks," says Duncan. "Their dedication and sacrifice were commendable — what they did truly mattered. This is a historic time. Many years from now, they can look back with great pride in the part they played over these weeks to save companies and the livelihoods of their employees."

"A huge thank you to Texas Citizens Bank for their amazing work on behalf of Trinity," wrote Bryan Kreitz, president of business development at Trinity (TLD), on LinkedIn. "I will no longer make jokes about 'banker's hours,' as they were responding to emails at all hours of the day and night."

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Visit here for more information on PPP loans. Wondering about finances during the pandemic? This article outlines several options.

You and your money have options right now. Getty Images

Your money resources during COVID-19 and beyond: explained.

Now may be a time of uncertainty, but you shouldn't have to also worry about the availability and security of your money. Texas Citizens Bank is always available to answer questions — COVID-19-related and otherwise — and has laid out some options for those wondering what sort of financial resources are available.

SBA loan
Cash flow is a business' life blood. The Small Business Administration is working with local banks to offer helpful business resources during this challenging time.

The Paycheck Protection Program provides small businesses — including independent contractors and the self-employed — with the funds to pay up to eight weeks of payroll costs, including benefits. Funds can also be used to pay interest on mortgages, rent, and utilities.

Those interested in applying for a Paycheck Protection Program loan through the SBA are encouraged to apply through their current financial institution as that will likely be the quickest route to receiving funding.

Loan payments will also be deferred for six months. No collateral or personal guarantees are required, and neither the government nor lenders will charge small businesses any fees. For more information about PPP, head here.

The SBA also offers low-interest disaster recovery loans to help businesses and homeowners recover from declared disasters. They can be used for both physical damage repairs and economic injury, the latter up to $2 million in assistance for businesses and nonprofits to help overcome their temporary loss of revenue.

Accounts receivable purchase solution
Accounts receivable purchase solution provides cash upfront for your invoices. TCB will check your customer's creditworthiness and, once approved, the bank will purchase one or more accounts receivable from that customer. You get the majority (usually 80 percent) of your AR amount upfront and accrue daily fee (for example, if you get paid the next day, you're only charged for one day). Once your customer pays the AR, TCB pays you the remaining balance, minus a small fee.

TCB's AR purchase solution ranges from $10,000-$1 million and doesn't have a long-term contract, allowing you the flexibility to pick and choose which invoices you'd like to sell to the bank. Find out more about how Accounts Receivable Purchase Solution works here.

How to bank from home
Most banks offer online banking and mobile apps with the following features:

  • Mobile check deposit — deposit checks simply by taking a photo of them using your mobile banking app
  • Online bill pay — pay your internet, electricity, gas, and other recurring bills online or through the app
  • Account summary — check your account balance and view your recent transactions
  • Some apps, like the Texas Citizens Bank app, offer additional services like budgeting, spending alerts, and peer-to-peer payment services, so you can quickly and securely monitor your spending and pay a friend or family member

Lastly, be on the lookout for financial scams. Fraudsters and scam artists tend to take advantage of uncertain times like these. Email, text, and phone scams are rampant, so please be careful to check that all communication you receive is truly from your bank. If you are unsure of a communication's validity, don't respond or giveaway any personal information. Always contact your bank directly to check.

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Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”

Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to​ launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.