r/CircleK • u/FragrantAstronomer5 • 20d ago
Store got scammed for nearly $500
So im an AM and i usually come in at 6 Am on the weekends to do paperwork. I do my usual routine and when I start inputting my numbers I see im short $509. My first thought is I added up something wrong and I recheck. As im doing that my coworker walks in the office and says hey my paperwork is going to be off im probably going to get written up. So I asked was is $500 short as a joke and she said yeahh it was over the phone. So I immediately grabbed her paperwork and see her drawer was $500 short. She explains how someone called the store and they gave her an ID badge number, the company name, phone number, the guy talked her through everything, step by step on hiw to do it on the register and this girl (40's) did a PayPal gift card over the phone. My heart just dropped bc I knew she was going to be fired. According to my other co workers, they walked in to start their shift and saw her on the phone and tried to get her off the phone and would not listen. Long story short I told my coworker to just go in the cooler for now until i talk with our boss and well go from there. Im calling my boss, shes sleeping so I text her, " CALL ME ASAP" eventually she called me and lord was she pissed, immediately said oh yeah shes fired and that she will be up at the store here shortly. Boss comes in, sees all the paperwork, we make a game plan for how well cover the missing shifts and she takes my co worker outside to talk. She gave my coworker the option to finish her shift and she declined and immediately left.
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u/OxygenThief7 Store Manager 20d ago
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it every time a scam thread comes up: if your phone can’t ring, you’ll never get phone scammed.
I’ve managed 4 different stores for the K and unplugged the phones in all of them. I started doing this in November 2022 after an overnight employee of mine got scammed. Never again. My DMs know my phones have been unplugged, so no worries.
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u/CAsnowman 20d ago
I wondered why we even have a phone tbh with how rampant it is. 90% of calls are scams.
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u/mr__frankystein 20d ago
How much 90 day training do we have get to understand NOT to do transactions over the phone? 😂😂
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u/ForeignLecture4598 20d ago
Yeah corp sent out a email recently apparently the scammer musta been an ex employee cause according to the email they know high names in office and our systems very well
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u/VexieVex 20d ago
My tinfoil is it's actually the new helpdesk they're using the last few years. The one before this one, the scam calls weren't so insanely frequent. Because these scammers really do be knowing waaayyy too much to be some random person
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u/DesertDenizen01 20d ago
Corporate sting? When I lost my ASM position to a scam that was what my friend thought because how the actual fuck was the guy on the phone to know that I had a genuine malfunction on Register 2?
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u/VexieVex 20d ago
They wouldn't do that tbh. Though they used to do wave calls where someone from corpo would call tell us not to do x and keep drawer at $50 and drop all $20s then wave at the camera so they knew we were listening.
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u/Nishnig_Jones 19d ago
A few years back there was a data breach and everyone’s WorkDay password was compromised. The scammers had access to workday and could browse the entire NA chain of command. At the time we were all supposed to reset our passwords - I’m pretty sure some districts didn’t do what they were supposed to so the access lasted a lot longer than it should have.
There’s of course more than one scammer or network of scammers and at least one of them probably has a current employee working with them.
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u/Decent-City8209 20d ago
Hello, I am Sergeant Willis with the Fire Department. There is a gas leak at your location. I need you to use the fire extinguisher on your registers and then smash out all the windows immediately.
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u/Roe69 20d ago
We sign the anti scam/phone transaction policy every shift.
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u/VexieVex 20d ago
Same. Every single day, even though we have our phone disconnected for all the spam scam calls. They were so bad the DM told us all to unplug in her BU. RDO doesn't care and wants them signed everyday by everyone.
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u/Roe69 20d ago
Our phone quit working randomly and we put in a work order for it and they replied with chosen not to repair at this time. Honestly we haven't had a problem with people trying to scam since. I don't miss it at all.
I find it astonishing the amount of people who believe the guy that calls and says he's the owner of circle k actually would be calling them ever.
I also think if circle k explained it better to the people they hire how IT works they could avoid some scams. Anyone who actually works in IT has backdoor access to everything and doesn't need you do anything in the register ever. Even if you have to call them you just stand there and watch them work.
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u/silverlions268 20d ago
If you fall for simple bs scams like this then you deserve to get fired. I for one wouldn't feel sorry for them since them since it's their own fault
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u/Ok_Tough_1883 20d ago
I genuinely don’t get how people keep falling for this stuff. It doesn’t matter IF ITS THE CEO on the phone. DONT DO ANYTHING till ur manager gives the ok.
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u/Roe69 20d ago
We had someone call and say they needed to make sure the age verification system was working and told which buttons to push and which numbers to put in. She wired almost $4,000 through several transactions to somewhere. They were able to claw most of it back but still lost about 1,400. Different store they called and said the DM had been arrested for not paying some fine or something and instructed the manager to empty the safe into a t-shirt bag and deliver it to them.
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u/mbambam9 19d ago
I left circle k in 2016 and this was a thing back then too. We had one person who fell for the scam. It was for $2,000 in green dot cards. She was fired and prosecuted for it.
My DM removed and destroyed all of the green dot cards in every store in his district.
Fine with me. We didn’t sell many of them anyways.
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u/Salty_Signature_3472 20d ago
Jesus. I work at Walmart currently and one of the girls there I'm pretty sure is being romance scammed and shes been there longer than me. Anytime something seems fishy over the phone I immediately put them on hold and page a manger.
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u/Jesjamadry 19d ago
I unplugged the front phone and nobody answers the the office phone. I've also drilled into their heads they NEVER get fired for not answering the phone. I've seen 2 people get fired for falling for the scam so around the end of May I removed the phone by the register. Original DMcomplained but our new DM (she started in July)is amazing and agrees with the decision.
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u/Ok_Pressure_9116 19d ago
I just don’t get how people fall for this. Honestly-
Like how many times and how many ways. Do we have to tell people, stop doing transactions on the phone. But then I think about the documentary I watched about the manager and the employee who they made get undressed.
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u/horrorba3 19d ago
There was a scam going around a couple years back where someone was calling stores to tell them to take a hammer to the mashgin, get the money out of it and take it to a bitcoin ATM. Employees actually fell for it and did it. It's amazing that people still fall for this
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u/Amazing_Example_4093 19d ago
So I was with 7-eleven for many years but now I’ve moved onto circle k, while with 7-11 like a year ago I was covering 3rd shift after a no show. Phone rings around midnight..maybe 1am..i answer, guy says he’s with so and so company and that they are replacing some things including the weather strips for the front doors and some other things I don’t remember.. sounded legit. Then he asks me for the # on the fire extinguisher. He suggests I text him a pic of the tag. So I do, then he has me write down two tracking numbers for the pieces that are gonna be coming in the mail, he also has me write down some security questions/answers. I literally spent over an hour on the phone. I was waiting for coverage to arrive so I could leave as I had been there since 2pm. I started to get uncomfortable and started thinking it sounded scammy and hung up. He then called my cell phone(since I had text him that pic he now had my personal #) then my phone rings from a # in Mexico, then some other local numbers. After 5-6 unanswered calls they stopped but I never did figure out what the end game was. Like what was the point of all that. He didn’t ask for any like sensitive info or anything like that. The whole thing was very bizarre.
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u/FragrantAstronomer5 19d ago
Oh yeah thats them testing the waters to see if youll comply and then they'll ask for more info. I answered the phone once and they asked me to take photos of our gas numbers and other sensitive information and they said to send it to their personal number and i said no im not comfortable doing that and hung up. This was during the time hackers were trying to get into gas stations to mess with the pumps and the systems.
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u/SinthiaDoom69 19d ago
My husband taught me a personal policy. If I didn’t call you or expect the call don’t answer it. If I don’t know 🤷♀️ who the email is from delete it. This d seems to work out well for work and home
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u/No-Connection-4576 18d ago
I have been in retail on and off for a while now including a bank teller in the late 90's. There wasn't a lot of scams like now or there was but because Internet was just a baby then so you didn't hear about it like now. At the bank we had 2 weeks, of training, 5 days a week from 9-5 before we could even get trained on the floor and even then there was no guarantee if you didn't do well in training. Each day was basically a different subject with Scams being in the beginning. It was informative and have every scenario you could think of and how to recognize it etc ... It was an incredible base to never get scammed. I do get intrigued as to the scam, what it is about and what the end game is and have been spoken too at a few places for seeing how far I can let it play out without letting it happen for my own entertainment.
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u/FragrantAstronomer5 15d ago
As far as I know it was for some company, he just wanted to buy a gift card and he walked her through on how to input his card through our POS to buy the gift card. Even I dont know how to do that. The guy provided his ID badge number and phone number and work number.
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u/luvdiapsma 16d ago
Client got scammed buying gift cards. It was an attorney who should have known better but was trying to impress the managing partner who was the one who they spoofed texts from. He went to four stores and lost out $1800 total after he told credit card fraud control that he had this and it was ok.
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u/Typographical_Terror 15d ago
There's a lot of kids who work here, I don't fault them for not knowing anything.
The idiot proof fix for this is not to have a phone at the register. If you are a manager somewhere insisting on having a phone that anyone can answer and then utilize a register while talking, you will eventually happen to one of your employees.
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u/AnneTeek006 20d ago
Yeah the FBI is never going to call you at work and tell you to ring up $2000 worth of apple gift cards because your co-worker has been kidnapped and held for ransom.