It happened on a cold spring day. I was sitting in front of my laptop looking for a way to fill my time. In the middle of a bunch of videos with huskies doing all kinds of funny stuff, I opened my student email and looked to see if anything interesting happened there.
The first in line was a message from my supervisor, the director of the institute where I had been for about 20 days. I thought — this is important, I have to read it.
The email said we should talk and he asked me if I had time. Well, I had time so I answered positively.
Then came the explanation that he is currently out of town and needs to go to a birthday party for which he needs to buy a present. Ok, weird, why is he telling me this? But, I continued to cooperate in the conversation.
He asked me to go to the store and buy gift cards, that would be a present. At first, I had no idea what gift cards were or how they work, but more than anything, I was interested in why he approached me of all people. Am I, the girl who has been there for 20 days, closer to him than the colleagues he has been working with for years? I shouldn’t turn him down though, I guess.
I researched the aforementioned gift cards and saw where they can be bought so I told him I’ll help (we still correspond via email). He was extremely grateful for my help and then he asked me to buy 4 Google Play gift cards with 50 euros each and then to take a picture and send the codes from those cards so that he could use them. Double weird!
Where did he get the idea that I, a student, have 200 euros to throw away?! This was really weird. I was thinking about what to do and was almost ready to go to the store when I remembered to casually mention it to another professor from the institute and find out what she thought about it.
I texted her and she told me that he would never, in a million years, ask anyone to do that, 100% guaranteed. She found it strange but she advised me not to do anything. My brain was exploding, my head was spinning. I’m in a foreign country, with people I don’t know, what if I mess something up?
I gave up going to the store but he kept texting me to check if something was wrong and when I was going to go buy the cards. By chance, I glanced at the email address (not just the name!) and saw that it had nothing to do with my supervisor. It’s a scam! I almost sent 200 euros to someone just because I’m naive and didn’t look at the stupid email address!
I felt like a fool. I never imagined that such a thing would happen to me. Yes, I received emails from supposed princes from Ghana offering me millions of euros, but it was too obvious that it was a scam.
I later found out that no one but me had received a similar message. It means that someone really tried to find out who is the newest in the institute and then introduced himself as the director. People are really ready for all kinds of scams!
Friendly advice: read the sender’s email addresses carefully so you don’t throw 200 euros down the drain.
