W-2 phishing schemes continue to be a problem for companies in every industry. Last week, American Senior Communities based in Indiana announced that one of its employees was scammed through a phishing email and thereafter sent over 17,000 employees’ W-2 forms to the fraudulent emailer.

Unfortunately, the scam was not discovered until a month after it happened, when some of the staff members discovered that when they attempted to file their tax returns, the returns had already been filed by a fraudster trying to collect a tax refund. Employees have been offered credit monitoring.

This is another example of how important it is to train employees, especially those in the payroll, H/R, benefits, and finance departments as they are being targeted with these schemes.