Admittedly, it seemed like a slightly strange request at the time, but eager to please, Alex grabbed his construction pass and headed towards the office exit.
Alex, who did not want to give his real name, almost fell victim to a con man posing as his boss – and is said to have lost hundreds of pounds as a result.
Like most people in such situations, he didn’t immediately realize that something was wrong.
As a trainee lawyer, Alex was keen to make a positive impression in his first year of his training contract. So when he received an email from his firm’s managing partner, he not only jumped at the chance to help, but felt like he had little 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 looked like it was from the firm’s managing partner.”
The email asked Alex to go outside to run an errand for the partner.
‘As an intern I thought, “well damn, if the managing partner is going to let me do something, I might as well do it”.’
Easy Money: Scammers target new employees and often pose as superiors and ask them to purchase gift cards
‘I was putting on my jacket and heading out when I got another email saying, ‘Give me your phone number and I’ll text you,’ so I sent my number and he started texting me.”
‘He texted me ‘are you still out’ so I rushed out of the office and then he asked me to go to the Apple Store to get some gift cards.’
“He said he was giving a presentation next week and he needed them to give out as prizes, so I asked how many he needed.”
Luckily, Alex didn’t get as far as the Apple Store.
“As soon as I left the office, the alarm bells started ringing,” he said.
“The strange thing was that he didn’t really specify how many he wanted, just had to tell him when I was there.”
‘At first, because of the shock of having supposedly been emailed by the big boss, the adrenaline was like “oh God, I better do this”.’
He said: ‘By the time I got outside and my brain had a second or two to catch up, I thought ‘actually this is strange’.’
“I met this guy, and he’s nice. I’m not sure he would do something like that. Why is he asking me to get Apple gift cards? It’s weird’
Alex added: ‘In retrospect there were a lot of warning signs, but even when I thought this I still wasn’t sure it wasn’t him.’
Alex called the managing partner on his work phone, but he didn’t answer. Given the urgency of the messages, this seemed to indicate that something was wrong.
When a Microsoft Teams message also went unanswered, it was confirmed that it wasn’t his boss on the other end of the text chain.
“I reported it to IT,” Alex said. “They were quite surprised to be honest. I think it’s happened before.”
Alex was told to block the number and report the email address as a phishing email.
“They had done a very clever job of creating a fake email with the name of the managing partner,” he said.
“So it looked like I got the email from the managing partner because it had his name in it. It wasn’t an internal address, but I thought maybe he was emailing from his personal account.”
Ultimately, the scammer in question targeted Alex because he was a new starter, allowing them to take advantage of him without questioning the external origins of the email.
‘I hadn’t worked there long, now I know you wouldn’t use a personal email address to contact someone at work, but I thought “he’s the managing partner, he can do whatever he wants”,’ Alex said .
“Because of the power imbalance between us, I thought I just had to do what he said.”
What are gift card scams?
These scams may be just one of countless that continually prey on the public, but what sets them apart is their targeted nature.
It’s easy to spot a scammer trying to sell home repairs or car insurance if you don’t own a home or drive a car, but it’s not that easy once the scammer has done his research, especially if he takes advantage of a vulnerability like The victim is new to his job.
Graham Cluley, independent cyber security analyst, told This is Money: ‘Gift card scams are common.
“Usually, you will be contacted by someone claiming to be your boss or a family member, asking you to urgently purchase a gift card on their behalf and share the gift card number with them.”
Gift cards are difficult to track and refund, and can be easily purchased by victims.
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: “Fraudsters can use gift cards like cash. For example, they can make in-app purchases through fake apps in the Google or Apple app stores, and funnel the gift card money into a ‘legitimate’ bank account.
‘It is also not uncommon for gift cards to be used to make purchases on Ebay, Amazon or Steam.
‘The number of reports and losses involving gift vouchers has been increasing for years. Retailers are encouraged to warn consumers about the risks of gift card scams.
‘What we need to do is raise awareness of the problem and reiterate a very simple message: gift cards are for gifts, not for payments. If your ‘boss’ contacts you and demands that you urgently buy a gift card, don’t do it.’
How can you spot gift card scams?
Hopefully, after reading Alex’s experience, anyone asked to purchase gift cards will think twice before doing so.
If you think someone is scamming you, double check with the person you think is contacting you – whether it’s your boss or your brother.
Instead of replying to them on whatever platform they contacted you on, you can use an alternative method to contact them, preferably by calling them on a number that you know is their number, or by speaking to them personally.
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