It would help if people were taught a few things about the IRS when they're kids. First, they never urgently need your money. There are consequences for missing deadlines but meeting them is up to you.

Second, the IRS may call you (an auditor did call me once) but they just tell you that a letter is in the mail. All their correspondence is verifiable by calling the office.

Third, they know your SSN. It's on the 1040. They will not call and ask you for it.

Fourth (applies to all callers, like banks, too), they don't call and ask for your PIN. If they do, find out how reach them from the main number, and never give a PIN to someone you don't know who called you.

Not just this, but common red flags that indicate a scam. There are many variations but they all follow the same broad plot lines. Any unexpected request for money should be verified. The more urgent it sounds, the more likely it is fake. If you are traveling, give your kids/parents a code word that you will use in case of an emergency. No legitimate collection agency, business, bail bond company, or government office is going to demand payment in the form of gift cards.

So she still took thousands in cash out the door with her? It sounds like she went right back to work and put it back, but if anyone found out she had taken that money off the property, I doubt she would keep her job. I would recommend not sharing this story with anyone else.

She immediately called her boss.

She didn’t get fired. Boss was initially sympathetic. But she lost her promotion. Then had hours cut. So she had to leave.

Honestly? This sounds like a constructive dismissal - designed to avoid claims of retaliation and victim blaming in a sympathetic case - to me.

She was a victim. She also showed poor judgment as an assistant manager being fast tracked to manage the store.

Also from his standpoint, he doesn’t know for sure if she was being scammed. She could have taken money then gotten cold feet and made up story.

It’s a crap situation.

Money person at Grocery store also showed poor judgment. I had to ask for the store manager. Which is what article is referencing.

> She could have taken money then gotten cold feet and made up story

Not saying anything about your daughter (don't know her), but there's an easy way to tell: get the phone records and verify the "conversation" took place. It should have lasted longer than 30 seconds.

One simple trick unravels 90% of the "someone else made me do it" clusterfucks.

It isn't illegal retaliation to fire an employee that is the victim of a scam though

No, it's generally not illegal to fire the scam victim employee. However, it almost certainly looks awful in the press. My point was that the employer was likely trying to distance themselves from any accusation in that respect. Further, constructive dismissal is an offence into and of itself in many jurisdictions, so that stands alone. It's just difficult to prove and prosecute.

This sounds like a separate, but related novel version of these scams that target Walmart's employee. You might want to report this to the FTC via the contact info in the article so they can be on the lookout for stuff like this in there investigations.

There was actually a news article with the exact scenario. I showed it to my daughter at the counter as a way to get her to slow down and think.

Can you post a link to the article? I’m having a hard time understanding the scam based on your comment.

Someone called the daughter (a Walmart employee) on the phone and convinced her they were an "auditor" for Walmart.

They convinced the daughter to take cash (from the register? from the safe?) to another store and almost convinced her send it to a green dot card (some kind of debit card?).

> An auditor over the course of 2 hours convinced her

An auditor, or a voice on a phone?

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.

Sincerely, totally honest guy.

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"

They usually look at your website and find some names - if you have buy-in you can create a fake president or CEO to catch many of these.

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).

From Hong Kong, and I rarely even pick up phone calls from unnamed sources anymore

It was initially just a simple request to countdown register.

But he never stopped taking and never let her put phone down. Never gave her a moment to think.

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.

Rather than italicizing, I think they meant to place auditor in quotes.

I've seen more of these sorts of scams working in my former retail employer than I have in accounting so far.