Scammers want tax information

Employees’ W2 information compromised

Posted

BROOKINGS – Brookings Police are warning businesses about a scam after a local business was contacted about tax information, said Lt. Derrick Powers.

The fraud was reported Tuesday, he said.

“A local business had one of their employees contacted by e-mail by someone who was posing as a manager for the business and utilizing the manager’s information,” Powers said.

“They requested a list of employee W2 information for the employees there to be sent to him via email. The employee who works with this information sent that on to the person, believing it was the manager,” Powers said.

Although the email initially looked legitimate, the employee realized after they had sent the information that “there was a discrepancy there and that they had been scammed by someone to obtain this information, at which point, they reported it to us,” Powers said.

“This was a larger employer (and) is notifying the employees of the incident,” he added.

A scam like this could happen at any time, but Powers warned businesses to be on the lookout at this time of year.

“This time of season, tax season, there are people out there who commit this type of fraud scams to obtain personal information, identifying information, taxpayer information to utilize for identity theft,” he said.

“These scammers are pretty good at what they do. They make it pretty believable. It can be easy for people to fall for this,” Powers warned. “Be cautious if you receive an e-mail from someone ... requesting information to be sent that contains personal information of others.”

He recommends that if the request is supposedly coming from someone in the company you know, that you contact that person and make sure they have requested the information.

“Don’t hesitate if someone is contacting you ... to verify that this is something they had requested to be sent,” he said.

For more information or to report a scam, contact the Brookings Police at 605-692-2113; contact Crimestoppers anonymously by visiting www.brookingsareacrimestoppers.com or by calling 605-692-STOP (7867).

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.