A phishing scam hooked another victim who worked for Seagate.

The employee emailed the income tax data for current and some former company employees to an unauthorized third party. The company employees are now vulnerable to potential income tax refund fraud.

Seagate said it found out on March 1st that an employee answered what turned out to be a fake email requesting the W-2 data for all current and former workers who were with the company at some point in 2015. The employee ended up exposing thousands of employee’s personal info to the fraudsters.

Jerome Segura said: Given the timing of the attack, it is almost certain the gang behind this is planning to commit income tax refund fraud just in time before the annual deadline.”

Seagate has contacted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and law enforcement regarding the breach. The exact number of victims is unknown at this time as Seagate has 52,000 employees. However, the company said that only American employees are at risk.

We immediately notified the IRS which is now actively investigating it along with federal law enforcement. The IRS has also informed us they have added extra scrutiny to our employees' accounts in order to prevent fraudulent tax returns from being processed,” Seagate said in a written statement.

Source: SCMagazine