I was recently the victim of a cyber scam. I’ve seen how these guys work and laughed off several attempts, and often wondered how anyone could get sucked into such a thing. Then it happened to me. The difference here is that it happened at work.
A little background, I started this position less than 2 weeks prior to the pandemic, so I never did build any real interpersonal relationships with my coworkers or get any true idea of the culture before we all started working from home. I learned my job at home, and have felt basically on my own the entire time.
Here are the broad brushstrokes. A few weeks ago I received an email from the owner of the company asking me to run an errand for him. There were a few dots to connect, so this didn’t seem completely out of the ordinary, plus when I told my immediate supervisor what I would be doing that morning, she didn’t call me to ask any questions. The long and the short of it is this was indeed NOT the owner of the company and I wound up getting scammed out of an amount of money equivalent to about one paycheck.
The CFO, who runs our office, put me through the ringer. I was interrogated about what happened, with the IT team, the legal team, HR, and my direct boss now all involved.
Here’s the caveat: they didn’t reimburse me for the money. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I’m sure they aren’t legally obligated to do so, but since the scam originated through THEIR servers, I would have thought they would feel some sort of MORAL obligation. I feel abandoned and humiliated and not sure what else to do but try to chalk it up to an expensive lesson learned.
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11 Comments
11 Comments
Karen Mattox
142
Lead software developer in the cloud
12/11/20 at 4:24PM UTC
Although I sympathize with you losing the money, I don't see how it is their fault. Scammers can use anyone's servers, that's kind of the point, right? Your company did not encourage anything, allow anything, cause anything that happened.
1 Reply
User deleted comment on 12/11/20 at 4:34PM UTC
Anonymous
12/11/20 at 4:35PM UTC
I generally would agree with you except that I did tell my direct supervisor what I was doing and she did not intervene, so she did allow it.
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Anonymous
12/11/20 at 5:10PM UTC
Without knowing what the scam entailed its hard to know what your involvement was. It could run the gamut.
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Anonymous
12/11/20 at 5:12PM UTC
I agree. I get scam emails all the time but don't act on them. More information on how your cash was scammed.
1 Reply
Anonymous
12/11/20 at 5:29PM UTC
I’ve gotten a lot of scam emails that I haven’t acted on, either, but I’ve never gotten one through my work email. I saw the owners name on the email and I panicked because I was told when I was hired that when he says “jump” you had better not even ask “how high”. You just jump, so that’s what I did.
I’d rather not get into details of the scam because I am incredibly embarrassed in retrospect that I fell for it. My takeaway from these comments already is the prominent thought seems to be that I was complicit, which makes me feel ill, especially since I always try to be as honest as possible. Sometimes to a fault.
I guess I have my answer.
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Heather
206
Editorial Director
12/11/20 at 6:02PM UTC
Unfortunately, the only person liable in falling for a scam is the person who falls for it. The company likely has guidelines in the employee handbook or onboarding materials that lay out how something like this would be handled (and if they don't, hopefully your situation will prompt them to add it.)
I am so sorry you're out the money, and I understand how frustrating it is, but it's just a lesson learned and not something you can hold the company accountable for. Your supervisor likely didn't question it because they just didn't have time to do so and trusted your judgement. These scams are smart and designed to trick people, but it's a common lesson in security and phishing trainings that any request for you to spend money should be independently verified with the supposed requestor.
1 Reply
Anonymous
12/11/20 at 6:16PM UTC
I know. I agree with you. Their line of questioning just felt so invasive and humiliating, to put me through that and then decide not to help me just felt somehow... wrong.
Also, my manager actually lamented not calling me and admitted it could have been avoided if she had, so mine was not the only mistake made. That doesn’t make it any more their fault but it does make it infinitely more frustrating.
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1 Reply
Heather
206
Editorial Director
12/11/20 at 6:49PM UTC
It definitely sounds like the could have handled it better from an interpersonal perspective is nothing else.
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Elizabeth Stiles West
340
I teach in person or online, college or K-12
12/11/20 at 8:20PM UTC
In the future, never use personal bank accounts or credit cards for anything at work. If the money was stolen from your credit card, you usually only lose the first 50 dollars; the rest is guaranteed by the credit card company in the event of credit card fraud. You may also want to report it to the Better Business Bureau and local authorities; if the scammer is local and gets caught, perhaps there is a chance of getting your money back. So sorry this happened and also that your workplace wasn't more helpful. I don't suppose their insurance covers it, but you might want to ask just in case. Scammers must be relatively intelligent to be able to figure out how to do these things; it's unfortunate they don't use their abilities for good.
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1 Reply
Anonymous
12/11/20 at 10:21PM UTC
I went to one of the merchants for help and they recommended submitting a report to the FTC, which is what I did.
You mentioned personal credit card use... thats exactly what I did. Part of what I’m guilty of is not having better boundaries for myself. I’m afraid of saying “no” to the people I work for. Most of the time that just costs me personal time, but in this instance my lack of boundaries cost me money.
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Elizabeth Stiles West
340
I teach in person or online, college or K-12
12/12/20 at 9:58PM UTC
If you're in the United States, you have very limited liability for credit card fraud. Someone got hold of one of my credit card numbers and went on a MAJOR shopping spree. I was out fifty dollars for it, but was not responsible for the rest. Contact your credit card company right away. You said you lost a paycheck's worth of money.-- again you should only be liable for the first fifty dollars; even though it's aggravating to lose that, it's not nearly as devastating as an entire paycheck. Good luck! You may want to call Legal Aid or whatever free legal assistance is available to see if they have any additional tips, and you might want to consider filing a police report too.
User edited comment on 12/12/20 at 9:59PM UTC
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