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

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for replying.
To those who wondered where I was, I was at work.
And yes, it's a legit internship. The person who hired her is another school mom. My son's friend is also an intern at the company. That kid is still in high school.
This happened yesterday morning amid the flurry of setting her up on her first day. The hiring manager was asking about setting up payment, instructing her on invoicing the company as an independent contractor (because it's a short summer job), all the usual private info one relinquishes to a company when setting up for work. Amidst this first hour, she gets an email from the company "president" asking for her phone number to discuss a special project. That is where the texting scam began. He told her these gift cards would be distributed to the company employees and it was supposed to be a surprise.

On the one hand, I wish I had been around. But on the other, I can't hand hold her for the rest of her life.

People have lost entire retirement investments to such scams so I feel this has a positive life lesson outcome in these early years of building her net worth.

[Anonymous]

I work in IT and the most frequent targets of these type of scams are new entry level hires and interns. I think the scammers must look at LinkedIn and target people who just added the company to their profile/announced their new job. It’s very common and a very costly lesson for your child OP.

[Anonymous]

This is a very common scam. Someone tried it with my company comptroller.

But how did the scammers know your daughter’s name and email address, and that she was working for this company? It was her first day as an intern. Did she post about it on social media or something? I’d ask about that. I think these scammers often use LinkedIn to get information about potential targets.

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand why the majority of people have concluded that the company is fake. The OP stated that when she looked at the actual email address that the request came from, it was not a company email address. This is a common scam — outlook generally shows just the name so the scammer looks up the name of the company President and then makes an email in the name of Bill Gates. When you look at the actual email address, however, it will say something like [e-mail].

This is a super common scam and I’m concerned that 90% of the people responding appear unfarmiliar with it. They ask for cash cards because there is no protection—you send them the codes for the cash cards and they immediately convert them. They are not in the US so there is nothing that law enforcement can do about it. If OP has umbrella liability insurance it might cover her. Or the company cyber insurance, assuming it’s a real company.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would be upset, too, but even adults get scammed.

She learned through the school of hard knocks. I let my kids do this for the small things so I doubt it will happen for the big ones. Well, it hasn't yet anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid got a summer internship as a remote researcher. At first the company said they would send her a laptop to work on. Then a few days before the start of her first day, they decided she could work off her own laptop. On her first day, she was instructed to download outlook and another cloud software where she was supposed to enter her work. One of the first outlook emails was from someone with the CEO's name but not the CEO's company address. This person asked for her phone number and from there proceeded to cajole my kid into buying 3K worth of Amazon gift cards because it was supposed to be a present for the employees. By the time I found out about it, it was too late, the gift codes had been redeemed. She used her debit card to buy this.

No matter how many times I have warned my kids about scams out there AND even told them about this sort of scam where the email is not originating from the actual person but someone impersonating that person, my warnings never sunk in.
So a couple of things are bothering me.
1) the company not giving her the equipment to work on but having her use her own
2) Downloading Outlook. 365 emails can be accessed thru their website, just like gmail. One doesn't need to download Outlook.
3) No security protocols as part of onboarding. In my experience, the IT department talks regularly about this sort of stuff to all employees and DEFINITELY as part of onbaording. Company ransomware happens.
4) No security filters in the company emails.

On the one hand, I am really angry at my kid and worried about my child's poor judgment. The latter is a huge source of concern. I can only hope this is a huge wake up call to a kid who has been so used to adults telling her what to do all her life. She is a good student, diligent and hardworking and that is its own problem. She doesn't question authority. She does as she is told. And she was easily scammed.

It sounds to me like the entire “internship” might be a scam.

[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.

No. We’re not misunderstanding. We’re emphasizing the other red flags OP seems to be overlooking— namely the “use your own computer” thing and the lack of security protocols that would normally be covered in onboarding. None of what OP describes is normal or a best practice for a legitimate company.

[Anonymous]

I'm a CEO at a company that frequently onboards 40 or so new staff at the same time. In the past two or so years this type of staff happens every time we go through a hiring cycle. Scammers monitor LinkedIn and prey on people who have just started new jobs and they either email or sometimes TEXT staff pretending oftentimes to be ME asking them to urgently buy gift cards. Sometimes the staff are so eager to impress because they are so new that they don't question. Now as part of our regular onboarding process we make sure to say that we will never ever ever ask staff to pay for any expenses out of pocket at any time and any request to do so should be assumed to be a scam. Staff are told to call me directly immediately on the phone or contact me via slack if they receive a request they find strange. I'm sorry your daughter learned this lesson the hard way , OP. And this company she is interning for needs to smarten up and honestly they should reimburse her.

[Anonymous]

So it's not a fake company, but a really lousy one. You need to tell the "school mom" that their hiring practices need to include scam training!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

No. We’re not misunderstanding. We’re emphasizing the other red flags OP seems to be overlooking— namely the “use your own computer” thing and the lack of security protocols that would normally be covered in onboarding. None of what OP describes is normal or a best practice for a legitimate company.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So this was not a real internship. The company is bogus.

Yes. The whole thing was a scam. I'm sorry.

[Anonymous]

That the scam occurred within the first HOUR of her onboarding makes me suspect this was an inside job

[Anonymous]

She needs a MacBook

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That the scam occurred within the first HOUR of her onboarding makes me suspect this was an inside job

+1

[Anonymous]

"instructing her on invoicing the company as an independent contractor (because it's a short summer job),"

Oh look, another labor law violation, red flag from an illegitimate company.

What is this company that needs so many high school "Internet researchers"?