12/31/2015
Last Wednesday I was preparing to do process Payroll for our staff on surepayroll online website. The dashboard website was updated and somewhat different, it seemed to take a while and was running slow. I was not sure if it was my computer or the website. We were busy I got logged off, when I log back in there were bonuses for 6 employees and also another payroll with several bonuses, that is when I called they surepayroll helpline. They voided one of the payrolls and walked me through voiding the other one, it seemed odd these went through. The voided payrolls did not make sense they were abnormally high $4,000, $5000, each??
Then on Saturday morning I noticed there was a debit of over $20,000 for a lump sum of payroll. I was under the impression that it was voided. I called the treasury department they were closed I talk to someone at Huntington they said that I would need to wait till Monday, she would note the account, because I was worried that we would have several checks bounce and our account would be overdrawn. I then made a photocopy of the transactions, went to my bank branch and explained this to them, Raina was very helpful at the Green and Cedar branch. She told me also to call on Monday morning.
Monday morning I called right away I explained the situation and they proceeded to tell me that there was direct deposit and it went to my employees, who set up direct deposit. I let them know we have never ever had direct deposit and would never want to do that, because we appreciate the one-two day float. She then proceeded to tell me who had direct deposit, one of those people were my husband. Since we have joint banking I knew it was not our account number or routing number or bank. It said Bank Corp. It also was the same exact bank for everyone else who the first payroll was issued for. The woman I spoke to was named Mira and gave me case number implying it was my fault. We ended the phone conversation.
After my husband and I spoke and it just did not seem to make sense.
We called back and spoke with a woman named Tiffany gave me a new case number. We tried to go through all of the accounts for our employees and see it was the same bank, she went through and saw that, it was!! I would've had to approve these pay periods and that it went to an email that was not mine, we talked to someone at risk management and also we notified our insurance company. We were trying to see exactly what happened and how it was possible that these six people all went from regular pay to direct deposit with fake accounts and these funds could go through without surepayroll doing a pre-check or having any triggers to notify us that this was happening to us or to Surepayroll internally. We are in the process
of having Huntington help facilitate us getting our funds back since they were debited from our account to Surepayroll, illegally since we did not approve.
Our insurance agent Fran Zettl, from United agencies informed us to make a police report since over $20,000 was stolen. A fellow entrepreneur sent us an article, he and his wife found (they own a small business in Cleveland Heights too) last night, it looks as if the same thing happened roughly $16,000 and same scenario of email changes on their secure portal that was hacked, same employees accounts changed to loadable bank cards (ex. Bank Corp). I can't believe that SUREPAYROLL still have not changed their security technology internal settings and that banks, and people refer business to these people. Thanks Joe!
So this morning I called to share this wonderful news that we have proof that this happened in the past 6 months ago to another small business, and tell them that the shame blaming that it was our fault, our computers, and we should claim it on our insurance instead of stepping up to the plate, admitting their responsibility, and paying us our money, but they aren't returning our calls. Maybe their too busy working on securing their payroll secure portal? #PayrollHacked