Payroll Scams: Keep Your Hard-Earned Money
Do not get fooled into losing your paycheck
A scam is happening where your employer will accidentally pay you twice on your payday. Who would not want two paychecks deposited on payday?
After you get the double payment, you will receive an email from your company’s human resources or payroll department.
They will tell you that they accidentally paid you twice and you need to send the money back.
You call the phone number in the email, and they will give you wire instructions. They may even threaten to not give you a paycheck in the next pay period.
You may not realize that the second payment comes from a company similar to your employer’s name, and the payment is a wire transfer instead of a direct deposit payment.
After they send you the email, they will start the process to reverse the wire payment. This reversal takes a long time, giving them plenty of time to convince you to wire them the money back.
The wire reversal is completed after you send the wire payment to pay back the extra paycheck.
Now, you have lost your actual paycheck since you willfully sent a wire payment.
If you are able to start a wire reversal, this so-called company will have already closed its account.
The wire payment should be your first clue that something is fishy. An employer will most likely not pay you by a wire transfer and will not ask you to pay them back that way.
If they threaten you, that should be another clue.
Do not call the phone number in the fake email from your company’s payroll or HR company. They obviously were hacked, or the email was spoofed. Find a different way to contact the department by using the company’s internal directory.
Another clue is the company name for the second paycheck. If it is not the same, your supposed employer did not make it.
This post was inspired by someone I know who almost fell victim to this type of scam.
