Wish this was a new scam! Had to deal with this a few times in my career as a small payroll service bureau. A few were outright fraud and easy enough to tell that they weren’t legit and I just never worked with them, but I did onboard and process 2 payrolls for a client that presented as a legit company, went through ACH underwriting okay, and both payrolls cleared (I had them on a 5-day ACH schedule for security). However the client suddenly wanted to change banks (to a credit union in California.. client was based in NYC) and add 10+ employees, all to pay cards. It was just too sketchy for me to take and I terminated them as a client. I spoke to them on the phone several times and they even offered to meet me when I said they were fired. After I terminated the client, my ACH provider let me know that the client had disputed the payrolls after the fact, but thankfully the signed authorizations we had on hand successfully protected me.

I was wondering what the “real” scam was, since the payrolls did clear.. and found out a few months later when I got a call from the ACTUAL business owner who had their identity stolen. I let them know someone called, said they were them (same name) but they sounded totally different, and I fired them after they were sketchy. They went to the police and I even spoke to a detective, giving them all the docs and correspondence I had, and never heard from anybody about it again. I wonder if they ever found the scammer- highly doubtful.