Wang Solutions

Watch Out Payroll & HR Departments: The W-2 Scam is Back

It’s troublesome that it’s 2017 and we still have to worry about e-mail scams. Even worse, this time around, there’s a repeat offender slinking its way into inboxes across the country. The IRS has renewed a warning regarding a fake e-mail that looks like it’s coming directly from company CEOs. Criminals are sending the e-mails out to the companies’ HR and payroll departments, and tricking them into sending back employee W-2 Forms.

We’ve seen this gimmick before. The scam first appeared last year, with the goal of fooling the nice folks who handle confidential employee records into giving up all the juicy details about those files – employee SSNs, names, and income info. So what do the thieves do with this secret info turned over to them? They try to file fraudulent tax returns so that they can get the tax refund money.

The scam has been dubbed as a “spoofing” e-mail, since the correspondence sure looks like it came from the head honcho, replete with the actual name of the company’s CEO. According to the e-mail, the person upstairs needs the payroll/HR office to send up a list of employees and all their private info, including SSNs, pronto.

Like a tired old script, here are some of the phrases that may appear in the deceptive e-mails:

• Kindly send me the individual 2016 W-2 (PDF) and earnings summary of all W-2 of our company staff for a quick review.
• Can you send me the updated list of employees with full details (Name, Social Security Number, Date of Birth, Home Address, Salary).
• I want you to send me the list of W-2 copy of employees wage and tax statement for 2016, I need them in PDF file type, you can send it as an attachment. Kindly prepare the lists and email them to me asap.

If you get any such urgent, cordial e-mail from the person in charge, immediately question its legitimacy. There’s always something a little fishy about scam e-mails – from the font used, to the spelling and grammar, to the sender’s e-mail – so stay on the lookout for anything at all that doesn’t look right. And remember, the best way to stop a scam is to raise awareness about it, so get the word out that hustlers are trying to use this old racket again.