A Case of Fraud [telecom]

I got a phone call on Saturday, informing me that someone I know had been defrauded: she had answered an email from her boss, and followed instructions, and had lost five-hundred dollars.

The email she received had asked her to go buy a lot of gift cards and to charge it to her own credit card. She did that. Then, when she emailed back, she got another email telling her to scan the serial numberd off the backs of the cards and to send the scans, via email, immediately. At that point, she contacted her boss directly, and found out that she'd been tricked: he hadn't sent the email.

I know this woman: she's as level-headed a person as you'll find anywhere. She raised a family, dealt with all the drama of having five children, and held down various jobs while her husband slogged through a federal civil-service job and made it to a pension. She is the probably the last person in the world I would expect to fall for an email scam.

If there's a moral to this story, it's that checking emails and verifying the id of a correspondent is better done late than never: although she paid $500 for the gift cards, she never sent the serial numbers, and now the company (no doubt dealing with hundreds of such scams) has cancelled the cards and promised her a refund.

But the lesson remains: it can happen to anyone.

Bill

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Bill Horne
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