My 18 year old was scammed out of 3K on her first day as intern

[Anonymous]

Using outlook and your personal laptop for work (depending on the type of work) should not be a red flag. What should have been a huge red flag was the company asking your teen to purchase something like gift cards. Wtf didn’t she come to you first before buying 3k worth of gift cards. You should be worried about your teens sense of judgement. I could see her being easily scammed again.

[Anonymous]

This happened back in June?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even if the codes were redeemed, is there any chance of calling the bank to get the money back due to fraud?

OP don't let this be the end of it. Have your daughter go through the reporting process. Read up together on common scams and identity fraud. Consider doing things like freezing her credit and registering her accounts on IRS and SSA now while she's young so people can't do it in her name. I'm very concerned that she also gave them access into her laptop or filled out phony on boarding paperwork with her SSN and driver's license. It will be painful going through these steps but a great learning experience.

No worries, it's a debit card. The money is not recoverable on a debit card, but she won't get a ding on her credit either.

[Anonymous]

Op, so sorry, but why your daughter don't have limit on her card? I think it's a good idea to have limit of $500 for debit card and $1000 for credit card moving forward!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if the codes were redeemed, is there any chance of calling the bank to get the money back due to fraud?

OP don't let this be the end of it. Have your daughter go through the reporting process. Read up together on common scams and identity fraud. Consider doing things like freezing her credit and registering her accounts on IRS and SSA now while she's young so people can't do it in her name. I'm very concerned that she also gave them access into her laptop or filled out phony on boarding paperwork with her SSN and driver's license. It will be painful going through these steps but a great learning experience.

No worries, it's a debit card. The money is not recoverable on a debit card, but she won't get a ding on her credit either.

The credit freeze is so they can't open accounts in her name, in case the entire internship is fake and she gave them her SSN and other PII.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if the codes were redeemed, is there any chance of calling the bank to get the money back due to fraud?

OP don't let this be the end of it. Have your daughter go through the reporting process. Read up together on common scams and identity fraud. Consider doing things like freezing her credit and registering her accounts on IRS and SSA now while she's young so people can't do it in her name. I'm very concerned that she also gave them access into her laptop or filled out phony on boarding paperwork with her SSN and driver's license. It will be painful going through these steps but a great learning experience.

No worries, it's a debit card. The money is not recoverable on a debit card, but she won't get a ding on her credit either.

The credit freeze is so they can't open accounts in her name, in case the entire internship is fake and she gave them her SSN and other PII.

+1,000

OP, you need to get her credit monitoring. The three big credit monitoring firms will flag her as a person potentially at risk for having her SSN and other ID stolen. It will mean she has to go through extra hoops when borrowing money but as she's only 18 now, she will not have to have the monitoring forever. But someone should absolutely be watching like a hawk for identity theft and opening of accounts in her name, after this. They may have a lot of her personal info.

And please STOP blaming and being angry with her. She is only 18. Why adults assume that at 18, people are magically adult enough to spot red flags in finances (or anything else), is insane to me. She has no life experience and no work experience and only YOU to teach her about red flags. Your communication with her must be questionable overall if she didn't think to come to you just to say, "Hey, my new job is telling me to buy these cards--does that sound right?" Work on your communications. If she knows you are so angry and blaming, she is LESS likely, not more likely, to come to you the next time something seems wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people are misunderstanding the problem. I have received these emails through my work email several times over the years. The scammer who is outside my company and probably not even in the Us sets up an email that appears to be the name of the head of my company. Outlook will show the email as coming from Bob Smith. But when you click on the name and look at the email address, it says something random that is clearly not bob smith’s email. The first time I got one, I had a whole back and forth with the guy because I was on my iPhone and it was hard to see the actual email address. It was a weird exchange and so I didn’t buy the cards but the person was actually moderately convincing.

So I guess add this to the list of things we need to teach our teens before they go out into the world. If it seems like you are being asked t do something weird, don’t just do it. Check in with someone (even if it’s just your parent).

She can report this to the company and maybe their cyber insurance will cover her, but I don’t think this is the company’s fault. It doesn’t have anything to do with her using her own computer or downloading outlook. She was scammed by a third party. It wasn’t reasonable for her to think they were going to ask a research intern to buy 3K worth of gift cards for other employees. That was not what she was hired for. I’m really sorry she got scammed.

You are misunderstanding there is NO legitimate company. The whole job is a scam! It’s set up as a remote internship and is 100% fake. What company is she going to report this to?

[Anonymous]

I work for an actual, real company and we frequently get scam emails supposedly addressed from upper management or people in charge. Sometimes IT quickly emails us not to open them. Most often they do not. It’s a life lesson for your daughter to not use her personal credit or debit card in situations like this.

I’ve received suspicious emails that don’t even involve money and picked up the phone to verify the sender at a different number I know is legit before replying or sent an email to a different email to verify.

Can’t she protest the charges, even if it’s a debit card?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, I would be very worried about her future.

Yep. She sounds dumbbbbb. Op you know this is not a real internship right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work for an actual, real company and we frequently get scam emails supposedly addressed from upper management or people in charge. Sometimes IT quickly emails us not to open them. Most often they do not. It’s a life lesson for your daughter to not use her personal credit or debit card in situations like this.

I’ve received suspicious emails that don’t even involve money and picked up the phone to verify the sender at a different number I know is legit before replying or sent an email to a different email to verify.

Can’t she protest the charges, even if it’s a debit card?

I'm going to claim that the $1000 I sent to my niece was fraud, because dhe didn't send a thank-you note.

No.
You can't protest a charge because you bought a gift and sent it to someone and now you want it back. The scammer didn't hack the account in any way.

[Anonymous]

Did the “company” also send her a check to buy a laptop? That’s how this scam with fake jobs has been working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I really have to believe that a scam would have to be much much more sophisticated before my 18 year old would fall for it. There is no way she would ever pay out $3000 of her own money, without, at the very least, coming to me or her father. The fact that many of you, as adults, are saying you would fall for it, is disturbing. And I am not the most highly intelligent person. Is this one of those high IQ vs street smarts kind of things?

It's an emotional panic/denial response. It happens to smart and dumb people. (But dumb people might not see anything wrong in the first place, so never panic)

The idea is that once you get sucked in a little bit, like the fake job offer, or the fraudulent request for help, you start to doubt but you dont want the doubt to be true. You don't want to be in a world where criminals can get so close to you. You don't want to be unemployed. You wish it's not true.

So, like a gambler, you throw good money after bad in a desperate hope that it was actually OK and you just misunderstood the red flag.

This is why people hire lawyers and real estate agents and psychologists
You need to confide in someone trustworthy, who has emotional distance from your situation and give good advice.

Everyone, whenever you get in any kind of trouble, TELL SOMEONE immediately. Parent, teacher, friend, anyone is better than going through road alone.
Teach your kids! Your kids may not feel safe telling you, if they fear punishment. So teach them to tell a friend if they can't tell you.

[Anonymous]

One of the best ways to get scammed is to believe you’re too smart to get scammed.

Would I have fallen for this particular one? No. That doesn’t mean I’m infallible. Relying on your own smartness is a terrible defense.

OP one you can teach your daughter is the one I use and try to get my elderly parents to use. It’s just to call back another way. If a bank calls me, or a boss or whatever, you call them back at a number you know you can trust.

If it’s the bank, I just ask them how I can call them back from the main 800 number. It has never been an issue. I remember one thing called “know your customer” that seemed very fishy but turned out to be legit, and they were perfectly happy for me to call the main number and told me how to navigate to them from there. I use the rule for anything involving money or personal information.

So in this case, your daughter would just write “great, thanks! I’m going to call your main number to verify the request by phone.” Then call the number she knows is legit.

Now in this case, if the whole company is fake I guess they might be sophisticated enough yo have a fake number and a fake person and blah blah, but it’s still an okay first line of defense and will save you from a lot of scams because they rely on volume.

[Anonymous]

No words. These people are disgusting

[Anonymous]

Your 18 year old adult is an idiot.