BBB shares how to protect your business from impersonation scams

ILLINOIS(KBSI) –An area police department warns against impersonation scams after they say a nightshift employee broke into the company safe and wire transferred a large amount of money to Mexico-under the impression they were talking to a store manager.

A public alert from the Anna Police Department was announced through social media after they say multiple businesses in the area received scam calls requesting large amounts of money.

Regional Director of the Better Business Bureau Sydney Waters says these are impersonation scams and they’ve become more common.

“We’ve been seeing a huge influx in telephone call impersonation scams. Particularly where people impersonate managers or people of authority in the workplace” says Waters.”

According to the Anna Police Department on December 30, 2024 an Anna Kroger night shift employee received a phone call from someone claiming to be a manager of the store.

They instructed the employee to break into the stores safe in an attempt to wire transfer money to the caller.

The employee did as directed and damaged the safe but was unable to gain entry.

This happened a second time on January 17, 2025 at a KFC/Taco Bell business.

The scam caller did the same thing but this time the employee was successful in gaining entry to the stores safe and then wire transferred a large amount of money to someone Mexico.  Waters shares how to identify these scams calls before its to late.

 “Generally, they are going to want you to act in a very urgent manner, making you feel like it’s some sort of emergency, so you don’t have time to really stop and think about what you’re doing” says Waters. In a perfect world you would stop and verify anything someone is asking you to do over the phone.” 

The BBB strongly recommends businesses have training on how to identify these calls or having a code or word that only actual employees would know.

“Alot of times we recommend that people have a safe word to put in place with your families, that’s a great thing to put in place in your work or you know like we talked about earlier just hanging up and calling someone else in the company to verify that whatever transaction your making is supposed to be made” says Waters.

Requests for wire transfers and gift card transactions over the phone should be seen as a red flag. 

“If anyone calls you at your place of work or calls you personally and they’re asking you to move money theyll generally ask you to do it through a gift card or wire transfer if their a scammer and the reason being is because these are untraceable and so once you do that the money is just gone. You can repeat the scam later but the odds of you getting that money back are just very very low.” 

To find information on scams that are currently affecting your area you can use the Better Business Bureaus scam tracker and enter your location.