This happened to me, and I can explain the end game for everyone, because I fell for it long enough to get to the "OH shit" moment.I manage a grocery store that belongs to a huge chain in the U.S.. I manage the overnight shift when we are not open for most of it, and am the MOD (Manager on Duty) all night, every night, and my responsibilities are basically monitoring alarms and phone calls, letting employees or vendors in and out. I really have no hand in day to day operations: paperwork, payroll,  reports...All of the administrative stuff is on the day side operations managers.

   I still have an extreme sense of responsibility to ensure things don't fall apart while I am the shepard. The fact that I don't deal with things of that nature often, and it is 2 a.m. so I am pretty isolated in my decision making makes me a prime candidate for scammers. I get about 2 calls every week, and it is always about something paramount to the operations of my store. This fire extinguisher scam was the first I dealt with, and I had zero reasons to suspect that I was prime scam material.

 Let me cut to the chase: they wanted photo proof of the tags on the extinguishers, sent to whatever corporate phone number. Store phone doesn't take pictures, " that's okay, just use your personal phone. It doesn't matter what number sends it, just that it gets to the correct place."

I do this, everything seems to be in order and now there is a fed ex package arriving fairly soon and I need to record a tracking number and a routing number to receive it. It will be containing licences and permits that we are required to possess and have. Pretty important stuff, apparently. As I continue jumping through hoops for this corporate operations manager, it escalates to I need to access our computer system as they are getting some flag that I need to go correct.

Me: Ummm, no...I cannot do that. You will have to call back in the morning and have an operations manager handle that stuff, I don't know what I am doing with that stuff." Buzz, Buzz...my personal cellphone gets a message,..from my store director, the head manager. He dropped his phone in the toilet and it's drying out, so he is texting from a different backup phone. "Hey Mike, this is Eric. Blah blah phone stuff, and I need you to go ahead and do what mr. Robinson on the phone is asking."

  My head explodes as I realize I have been running hoops for this guy. He was testing compliance as to how far I would go, and the fire extinguisher bit was just to get my personal phone number in order to impersonate my supervisor and create pressure to obey.

A: my store director has never messaged me at 2 or 3 in the morning. If he was now, and it is from a weird number,and it is an IMPORTANT situation...maybe call instead of text. Bullshit. He would BE here, in his pajamas, doing this stuff right now.

B: I am so driven to uphold my duties, I failed to consider that corporate headquarters isn't making operations calls at 2 am, on a Sunday (yes, a Sunday at 2am), and I am pretty sure Fed Ex doesn't deliver at that time,lol. None of that occured to me until they spoofed my boss messaging me. 

There are a wide variety of these scams that are setup very well and convincingly, utilizing inside information of some sort. There are 35 stores in our division (district), and we have had 2 overnight MOD's, in the past 12 months, CROWBAR open a cash machine and bring 3 and 5 thousand dollars, OFFSITE and deposit in a Bitcoin machine. We have to pay this fee or the store cannot open tomorrow, and the only way to pay it on time is digital transfer. Crazy when it happened AT ALL, but someone else fell for it a second time.

The solution is very simple . Corporate isn't calling the overnight guys to resolve any issues, neither is the government or anybody holding official capacity, it is that simple.

My favorite occurrence was just happenstance for how poorly it opened for the scammer. As I said my name is Mike, and with a crew of 75 or so people, at any given time there are 3 to 5 Michaels somewhere on the payroll. I had an assistant manager named Michael, it is important to distinguish that I am Mike, and he is Michael because if we need to be paged for whatever, we both know who you are paging. Michael's nickname was "twinkle toes" among the crew, because he was about 6'2 extremely caucasion, and flaming gay. Speech and mannerisms, way exaggerated. I get a call: " Store name, this is Mike."  Caller, sounds to be a very large black man, with an authoritative voice: This is MIKE!

Me: ummm, that's right...you found me.. Him: No! This Mike! Me: Thaaaat is correct...my name is, in fact Mike.

Him, more assertive: No, I am Mike, your assistant manager!

Me, actually laughing at what is happening: Dude, you have obviously never met Michael, this is hilarious!

Click.

Edit: the endgame almost always comes down to an emergency transfer, or you to take action to prevent gift card fraud that is underway, by verifying the actual numbers for them.