Hi it’s me your irs tax audioter accounter cto manager I need you to buy many Amex gift cards and send me the codes so I can surprise the Ukrainians with them.
You'd be surprised how targeted these scams can be.
A friend's mother got an email from her synagogue, with the rabbi's name and everything, asking her to buy some gift cards to surprise some other (named) officials.
The grocery store manager was telling us how scammers have names of all higher ups at her and nearby stores and their schedules. So they know when to call, and what names to mention. All extremely professional sounding over the phone.
except that the scammer was another attendee with a drug problem? before you yell at me, this actually happened to me, contacted via a trusted, long-term social club, and one of the wives (unknown to me) apparently had a full-on painkiller addiction and when it is time, they do anything.. even as far as using the phone list from the trusted social group to arrange for (thinly disguised) payment card purchases "now"
A new secretary at a company I consult for received an email saying she needed to buy gift cards for an employee. Our best guess is scammers look for people posting about their new administrative assistant jobs on LinkedIn, etc....
Many companies leak tons of information on their website; look up the CEO/President's name, find someone on Linked-in that is a new hire, guess their email based on whatever format the company uses (first.last@company, etc) and send a decent looking email or call.
It's pretty darn advanced, and can extend to texts, etc. If you don't know 'how your president talks' you can easily be bamboozled (we cover it in onboarding now, and have identified people they can always go to with questions).
Happens all the times at companies even with mandatory training that specifically mentions scams involving gift cards. Pretty sure they are now using deep fakes with voice. Started seeing messages with “hi this is companyexecutive call me asap at this number. I need gift cards for an event.”.
Ah you must be the same auditor who sms'd me my new amazon account credentials a couple hours ago. Thanks for being so on the ball watching for fraudulent activity.
Sincerely, totally honest guy.