Intern Targeted Scam Schemes

Sophomore summer I interned at a LMM boutique and received an email from the CEO of the bank (again, LMM, so CEO was basically just one of the more senior MDs functionally so this didn't seem odd to me) asking me to buy $1000 of gift cards for a corporate giveaway program happening soon and asked for my phone number for further instructions. So I requested absence from a meeting happening in 10 cause I thought gotta prioritize the CEO, and then ran down 15 streets to the nearest TJ Maxx as he specifically requested physical cards, in the smothering June heat wearing a full suit.

As I was about to pay, my ApplePay got rejected for irregular transactions. So then I scrambled to find a ATM that took ApplePay because I had lost my physical card the week prior. With the cash, I ran back only to find that gift card purchases were restricted to $600 per person per day per store; my dumbass didn't stop to think why. So I buy one for $500 and ran to a different store to buy the second $500 as the CEO was on my ass asking me to deliver quickly. The cashier at the second store was like are you sure you are not getting scammed, and I went no no it's the CEO of my bank, just process the payment quickly plz. 

Finally, with the purchases complete, I took pictures of the redemption codes and sent them to the CEO only to receive instruction to buy more. That's when I realized, I done fked up. So I circled back to the email that started all this and found out that though the name was the CEO's name, the email address was a random fake one. At that very moment, messages on Teams popped up from my VP asking me why I had not been at the desk.

RIP. MDs gave me their condolences and a firm wide email was sent out asking the kids to watch out for this.

Has anyone else experienced similar types of scams?

17 Comments
 

Got these emails too working at a boutique but never fell for them since it was super obvious they were impersonating the CEO (email was a @gmail.com, misspellings in the email). Hard to fall for it imo.

 
Funniest

Respect to the hustlers for knowing that wall street interns/analysts are all insecure af and willing to grovel for a perceived higher-up

 

They're good at doing research to understand the industry, unlike some who show up for internship interviews

 

lmao yeah I couldn't believe I fell for that either. Was a L have to admit but wanted to share the story to alarm people and also for some laughs. I'm going to a top BB in the best group this summer. I guess in my defense there was a super high pressure culture in the office and sweaty asf (0 downtime at work), so I just wasn't in the mindset to give this scam email a second thought. 

 

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