 JANUARY 2018 | VOLUME #149
 The 2017
Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFR) for
the PERS and TRS are now available online. To request hard
copies, please call (907) 465-5711. The financial statements are also
available.
PERS Publications
TRS Publications
The Internal Revenue Service, state tax agencies and the tax industry today
urged all employers to educate their payroll personnel about a Form W-2
phishing scam that made victims of hundreds of organizations and thousands of
employees last year.
The Form W-2 scam has emerged as one of the most dangerous phishing emails
in the tax community. During the last two tax seasons, cybercriminals tricked
payroll personnel or people with access to payroll information into disclosing
sensitive information for entire workforces. The scam affected all types of
employers, from small and large businesses to public schools and universities,
hospitals, tribal governments and charities.
Reports to phishing@irs.gov from
victims and nonvictims about this scam jumped to approximately 900 in 2017,
compared to slightly over 100 in 2016. Last year, more than 200 employers were
victimized, which translated into hundreds of thousands of employees who had
their identities compromised.
By alerting employers now, the IRS and its partners in the Security
Summit effort hope to limit the success of this scam in 2018. The IRS last
year also created a new process by which employers should report these scams.
There are steps the IRS can take to protect employees, but only if the agency
is notified immediately by employers about the theft.
Here’s how the scam works:
Cybercriminals do their homework, identifying
chief operating officers, school executives or others in positions of authority.
Using a technique known as business email compromise (BEC) or business email
spoofing (BES), fraudsters posing as executives send emails to payroll
personnel requesting copies of Forms W-2 for all employees.
The Form W-2 contains the employee’s name, address, Social Security number,
income and withholdings. Criminals use that information to file fraudulent tax
returns, or they post it for sale on the Dark Net.
The initial email may be a friendly, “hi, are you working today” exchange
before the fraudster asks for all Form W-2 information. In several reported
cases, after the fraudsters acquired the workforce information, they
immediately followed that up with a request for a wire transfer.
In addition to educating payroll or finance personnel, the IRS and Security
Summit partners also urge employers to consider creating a policy to limit the
number of employees who have authority to handle Form W-2 requests and that
they require additional verification procedures to validate the actual request
before emailing sensitive data such as employee Form W-2s.
If the business or organization victimized by these attacks notifies the
IRS, the IRS can take steps to help prevent employees from being victims of
tax-related identity theft. However, because of the nature of these scams, some
businesses and organizations did not realize for days, weeks or months that
they had been scammed.
The IRS established a special email notification address specifically for
employers to report Form W-2 data thefts. Here’s how Form W-2 scam victims can
notify the IRS:
- Email dataloss@irs.gov
to notify the IRS of a Form W-2 data loss and provide contact information,
as listed below.
- In the subject line, type “W2 Data Loss” so that the
email can be routed properly. Do not attach any employee personally
identifiable information data.
- Include the following:
- Business name
- Business employer identification number (EIN)
associated with the data loss
- Contact name
- Contact phone number
- Summary of how the data loss occurred
- Volume of employees impacted
Businesses and organizations that fall victim to the scam and/or
organizations that only receive a suspect email but do not fall victim to the
scam should send the full email headers to phishing@irs.gov
and use “W2 Scam” in the subject line.
Employers can learn more at Form
W-2/SSN Data Theft: Information for Businesses and Payroll Service Providers.
Employers should be aware that cybercriminals’ scams constantly evolve.
Finance and payroll personnel should be alert to any unusual requests for
employee data.
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