Midday Interview: Sgt. Jane Edenfield advises of corporate scams targeting business employees

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL)

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— Sgt. Jane Edenfield with the Columbus Police Department stopped by WRBL News 3 and spoke with anchor Teresa Whitaker about corporate scams that are targeting businesses and employees.

Edenfield says scammers are pretending to be corporate bosses or posing as federal agents to strike fear in individuals to get what they want.

“It’s scammers over the phone and they target businesses such as gas stations… they aim towards the end of shifts, so we are talking 10 p.m., 11 p.m., midnight,” Edenfield said. “By that point it’s usually one employee, they’re trying to close down, but they are busy. And they (scammers) will call and pretend to be someone from their corporate office.”

And that’s when the scammer will prompt the employee that an investigation has been launched into a different employee and all the money needs to be empty from the safe.

“They’re pretending to be the corporate office and they will tell them to get the money out the safe and either put it in a Bitcoin machine, which we’ve talked about or buy gift cards and read them the number off the back,” Edenfield explained.

Edenfield walked down a few instances to be aware of including scammers posing as secret service agents, where they would ask the employee to empty the safe and prompt them to buy gift cards to make sure the money isn’t counterfeit.

Employees should be aware of the time these kind of calls come in as they tend to be late at night or on the weekend and to pay attention to the phone number on the caller ID.

Edenfield also advises managers to provide extensive training to employees so they can follow proper protocol and avoid becoming victims of corporate scams.