Scammers Out to Scam Scam Scam — Shake It Off — And Learn From My Huge Mistake
I was mortified when I fell for an $1800 email scam
We think it could never happen to us. We’re not that dumb, naive, old, or gullible. I’ve gotten plenty of emails about Nigerian Princes, links that I obviously shouldn’t click on, and countless other obvious scams I didn’t fall for. Yet, I got suckered at 40 years old, when I thought I’d avoided it all and knew better. I’m not the only one. The scam that I fell for involved iTunes gift cards.
“While the specific amount lost to gift card scams can be small ($5, $10, $20) or large (in the thousands), the total yearly amount reported for 2018 (January to September) was $53 million when all reported loss was combined.” — Socialcatfish.com
What was different about the scam I fell for? I fell for an Executive or CEO Imposter scam, which plays on psychology. These scams appear altruistic and legitimate on the surface level. I believed I was doing a favor for my boss, my organization, and my co-workers. All scammers play on the goodness and naivete of people while creating a feeling of urgency around the situation. Jason Weiland reflects on the time he was the victim of an online romance scam. The same psychology is employed.
While I like to think that I’m smarter than scammers and that being scammed would never happen to me, it did. I was a victim of an online scam. It was embarrassing and costly.
Despite many of us believing it’s only uneducated, gullible, elderly people who fall for scams, a Bbc.com article says, “Scams cost individuals, organizations and governments trillions of dollars each year in estimated losses, and many victims endure depression and ill health. There is no other crime, in fact, that affects so many people from almost all ages, backgrounds, and geographical locations.”
Hopefully reading this will put you on alert for this particular scam and you won’t be caught off guard as I was.
The Story of How I Got Scammed Through Work Email
When this happened, I was going through a bout of depression. Life felt heavy and I wasn’t so much living as I was going through the motions. I was doing my best to get through each day. On one of my days off, I was soaking in the tub with my phone in hand. A work email popped up. I clicked.
It was from the director. The boss of my boss’s boss. He informed me that he wanted to reward everyone for their hard work on a particular event and he needed me to go purchase gift cards. It was my day off, but I’d run errands for my office before. The story was believable on the surface level.
Something didn’t feel right. I sent my husband a text. He was at work and very busy. He told me to go ahead and put the expense on our credit card. The scammer sent some very bossy emails. This is a sign of being scammed. I almost sent the director a text, but I decided not to.
Although it felt weird to put such a high amount of money on a credit card, I had run an errand for work before to purchase something much smaller. That expense was reimbursed. I was low on the totem pole and didn’t have access to a company credit card. Looking back, if my employer had decided to dole out gift cards, the purchase would have certainly been delegated to someone with one of those company cards. This may have crossed my mind at the time as a warning, but I just shrugged it off and thought it was a weird ask from work.
Instead, I got out of the bathtub, threw on clothes, and hurried to Walmart where I grabbed the 36 $50.00 iTunes gift cards. I walked up to the counter. My credit card was flagged and I asked the checker to hang on. In hindsight, he was trying to suss out if this was a scam or not. I told him the whole story and he decided my boss was very nice.
I called my credit card company and had them take off the hold. I then bought all the gift cards. Before my husband was home for lunch, I had scratched off each code and given it to “the boss.” The imposter had a strange demand and story for giving them all the gift card codes. They cashed the money. I was out the money and they had the value of the gift cards.
Not a few minutes after I’d sent the photos of the codes, I knew I’d been had. If I’d acted more swiftly in making phone calls there’s a chance I could have stopped it. My first phone call should have been to Apple to report the scam so they could put a stop on the codes. They would have issued me a refund if the codes hadn’t been cashed. They were apologetic and it was obvious they get this kind of call often. Very often.
Instead of making calls, I cried. It hit me hard. I’d been scammed. I let my mind slow down and checked in with my intuition which had been telling me something was wrong the whole time.
Going to the computer, I started googling…I sent an email to work, asking if this was legit. Of course, it was not. I started crying. I felt incredibly stupid. And I’d just lost a lot of money we didn’t have in the first place.
I called Apple to see if they could help, but the gift cards had already been cashed. I tried to get a refund through Walmart. That was a no-go. I filed a report with the police. They were sympathetic, but there was nothing they could do, citing it’s very difficult to find internet criminals. I filed a report with the credit card company. They were also unable to do anything. Beyond losing that large sum of money, my embarrassment was monumental.
Coworkers got mad on my behalf that I’d been taken advantage of. In a moment of grace, work decided to partially reimburse what I’d lost since it had happened through a work email. Money doesn’t appear from thin air so I while I was grateful for the partial reimbursement I also felt guilty and terrible that my mistake had cost my place of employment money. My employer then became much quicker at catching scammers and announcing when anyone had infiltrated the email system.
Lesson learned.
The Psychology of Scams
Scientificpsychic.com explains lists the three stages of a scam as quoted below. All scams infiltrate some kind of psychological barrier so the victim falls for the bait.
The Three Psychological Phases of Scams
- “A scammer provides false information and urges a potential victim to act upon it”
2. “The victim acts on the false information and transfers some benefits to the scammer.”
3. “The third stage occurs when the victim realizes that he has been cheated, but the best scams are those that go undetected and try to avoid this stage in order to repeat the process.”
The Specific Psychology I Fell For
- A scammer sent a fake email posing as the director of my organization. They used the psychology of benevolence by pretending I would be helping them do a favor and gifting rewards for hard work to my co-workers.
- The scammer gave me a task and then repeatedly checked in to see if I was following through on the instructions, using the psychology of urgency.
- Thankfully, I reached the third phase where I realized I’d been cheated. I was upset and took all actions possible to stop my mistake, but it was too late. The silver lining? I don’t think I’m in danger of falling for this scam again.
How to Avoid Falling for The Executive Imposter Scam
- Trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is. If someone appearing to be from your work organization is asking for money, call or text them directly to verify it’s them. Likely, it is not.
- Be suspicious of urgency. If you receive multiple pushy emails in a row from a “co-worker” there’s a good chance it’s not them. Look at the email address and compare to see if they are actually the same. In my case, I believe the email was slightly different and the signature line was slightly different. Upon rereading emails, I could tell the tone was quite out of character for the director of the organization.
- What the workplace can do. Request employees to report any suspicious activity. As soon as any suspicious activity is known about, alert all employees about the imposter email.
Hindsight is 2020
Now I know I was the victim of what the FBI calls the CEO or executive imposter scam. As stupid as I felt and as much as I hated this happening to me, there is a small silver lining.
Hopefully, my mistake will cost you from being duped by the executive imposter scam. My husband and I discussed my error in judgment with our kids and explained how important it is that they be on guard when they are online. I brushed up on internet safety and fraud sites. I know my credit card company doesn’t want me to be scammed; if a flag comes up, there’s likely a good reason for it.
Stay up-to-date on internet scams by visiting the FBI’s Internet Fraud website and the Federal Trade Commission website. Living in the technological age has many wonderful perks. It also means we must be more alert to this predatory online behavior.
This article by Lisa McAully helps us secure our cyberspaces.
