That whole thing about not opening up an email unless you know who is sending it to you. Well, the Milwaukee Bucks might want to take a introductory class here soon.
In a weird story surrounding their players’ financial records and a phishing scam, one member of the Bucks organization apparently sent financial information to a scammer just recently.
According to Shams Charania of The Vertical, an email was sent to Bucks players Wednesday night relating to a “serious security incident” that included an employee distributing IRS W-2 documents in an email scam.
The scammer reportedly impersonated Bucks president Peter Feigin.
That’s some scary stuff right there. It could have also been avoided with a bit more attention to detail on the organization’s part.
“The communication received on this major security breach is unacceptable,” an agent for one Bucks player told The Vertical. “The players need to know the exact measures being taken by the Bucks and the FBI to ensure each and every player’s identity and financial information will not be compromised. There needs to be accountability for such a mistake, details on the steps taken to rectify it and a process put in place to make sure this never happens again.”
We aren’t talking about miniscule bank accounts or net worth’s that would make it pointless for a criminal to pull a scam. We’re talking millions on top of millions of dollars here.
The Bucks did release a statement acknowledging the error:
“We take this incident, and the privacy and security of our employees, very seriously. We immediately launched an investigation, which is aggressive and ongoing,” the team said in a statement. “We believe this incident arose as a result of human error, and are providing additional privacy training to our staff and implementing additional preventative measures.”
Such scams in the past have led to individual identities being stolen, credit cards opened up by the criminal and other situations that cause major headaches in the lives of those duped.
This most definitely isn’t a good look for the Bucks. And while it might be an isolated incident, the idea of players’ financial records not being secure paints the organization in a bad light.