What happened
The NBA's Milwaukee Bucks disclosed in May 2016 that an employee had emailed 2015 W-2 tax documents for players and staff to an unknown party in response to a message impersonating the team's president. The documents included names, addresses, Social Security numbers and compensation figures. The team offered three years of credit monitoring to those affected.
How the deception worked
On 26 April 2016 an email arrived that appeared to be from the Bucks' president requesting the organisation's W-2 forms. A staff member sent them. The pretext was the standard W-2 season request, and the impersonated identity was the single most senior person in the organisation, which suppresses the instinct to verify. A professional sports team is an unusually attractive target for this scheme because the compensation figures in the files are large and publicly interesting, and because players' Social Security numbers carry high resale value. Discovery came only after the request was later questioned internally.
The control that would have caught it· our reading, not a claim from the sources
A named-executive request for the entire workforce's tax records should trigger a mandatory verification call, and payroll data should be exchanged only through controlled systems.
Sources (2)
- Milwaukee Bucks' tax information released by employee who fell for email scamThe Washington Post·washingtonpost.comOpen ↗
- Bucks leak tax info of players, employees as result of email scamESPN·espn.comOpen ↗
This entry summarises public reporting. It is not a legal finding, and details can change as investigations conclude. Found an error? Send a correction.