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Admittedly, it seemed like a bit of an odd request at the time, but eager to oblige, Alex grabbed his building pass and headed toward the office exit.
Alex, who did not want to give his real name, almost fell victim to a scammer posing as his boss, and that would have caused him to lose hundreds of kilos.
Like most people in situations like this, he didn’t immediately realize that something was wrong.
As a trainee solicitor, in his first year of postgraduate law, Alex wanted to make a positive impression. So when he received an email from the managing partner of his company, he not only jumped at the opportunity to help, but he also felt he had no choice but to do so.
“I was sitting at my desk on a normal Monday,” Alex said, “and I got an email in my inbox that appeared to be from the company’s managing partner.”
The email asked Alex to go out to run an errand for his partner.
‘As a trainee, I thought: “Well, damn it, if the managing partner asks me to do something, then I’d better do it.”‘
Easy Money: Scammers target new employees, often posing as a superior and asking them to purchase gift cards.
“I was putting my coat on and walking out when I got another email saying ‘give me your phone number and I’ll text you,’ so I texted my number and he started texting me.”
“He was texting me ‘Are you gone yet?’ so I ran out of the office and then he asked me to go to the Apple Store to buy some gift cards.”
“He said he was doing a presentation next week and needed to give them out as prizes, so I asked him how many he needed.”
Luckily, Alex didn’t make it to the Apple Store.
“As soon as I left the office, alarm bells started ringing,” he said.
“The strange thing was that he didn’t actually specify how many he wanted, he just said to let him know when it was there.”
“At first, because of the shock of supposedly getting an email from the big boss, the adrenaline was like ‘Oh my God, I better do this.'”
He said: “When I came out and my brain had a second or two to catch up, I thought ‘actually, this is weird’.”
‘I met this guy and he’s nice. I’m not sure I would do something like that. Why are you asking me to buy Apple gift cards? It’s strange’
Alex added: “In retrospect, there were a lot of red flags, but even when I thought about this, I still wasn’t sure it wasn’t actually him.”
Alex called the managing partner on his work phone, but he didn’t answer. Given the urgency of the messages, this seemed to show that something wasn’t quite right.
When a Microsoft Teams message also went unanswered, he confirmed that it wasn’t his boss on the other end of the text message chain.
“I reported it to YOU,” Alex said. “To be honest, they were quite taken aback, I think it’s happened before.”
Alex was told to block the number and report the email address as a phishing email.
“They had quite cleverly made a fake email with the name of the managing partner,” he said.
‘So it looked like I was getting the email from the managing partner, because it said his name. It wasn’t an internal address, but I thought maybe he was emailing me from his personal account.
Ultimately, the scammer in question had targeted Alex because he was a beginner, allowing them to profit from him without questioning the email’s external origin.
‘I hadn’t been working there long, now I know you wouldn’t use a personal email to contact someone at work, but I was thinking “he’s the managing partner, he can do whatever he wants,”‘ Alex said.
“Due to the power imbalance between us, I thought I should do what he said.”
What are gift card scams?
These scams may be just one of countless that constantly prey on the public, but what sets them apart is their targeted nature.
It’s easy to spot a scam trying to sell home repairs or car insurance when you don’t own a home or drive a car, but it’s not so simple when the scammer has done your research, especially when they take advantage of a vulnerability like the victim is new to his work.
Graham Cluley, independent cybersecurity analyst, told This is Money: ‘Gift card scams are very common.
“Usually, someone claiming to be your boss or a family member contacts you and asks you to urgently purchase a gift card in their name and share the gift card number with them.”
Gift cards are difficult to track and refund, and victims can purchase them very easily.
Once the victim has purchased the gift cards, the scammer will usually ask them to send them the gift card codes and then transfer the balance or sell it to other criminals.
Cluley said: “Scammers can use gift cards as cash; for example, they can make fake in-app purchases on the Google or Apple app stores, funneling the gift card money into a ‘legitimate’ bank account. ‘”.
‘It’s also not unusual to see gift cards used to make purchases on Ebay, Amazon or Steam.
‘The number of reports of gift card scams and losses has been increasing for years. Retailers are encouraged to alert consumers about the risks of gift card scams.
‘What we need to do is raise awareness of the problem and repeat a very simple message: gift cards are for gifts, not payments. If your “boss” contacts you and demands that you urgently purchase a gift card, don’t do it.
How can you spot a gift card scam?
Hopefully, after reading about Alex’s experience, anyone asked to purchase gift cards will think twice before doing so.
If you think someone might be scamming you, it’s best to double-check with the person you think is contacting you, whether it’s your boss or your brother.
Instead of responding to them on whatever platform they contacted you on, use an alternative method to communicate with them, preferably by calling them at a number you know is theirs or by speaking to them in person.
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