Sophos Internet Security Pretending to be from Sophos (Bare Wire Ltd.) got my financial information and exhorted money Rio Vista California

A person presenting himself as an employee of Sophos Internet Security with whom I had a contract to provide security called and told me that the company's servers had been hacked and they were going out of business. As a result they wished to refund money that would have covered my computer since they could no longer provide that service. I had called them before when I had problems with my computer and they entered my computer to see what the problem was and were thus able to fix it so the thought that this was not on the up-and-up never entered my mind. This time the person asked to get into my computer, for me to pull up my banking information, so that he couid show me the refund they were issuing. When the refund showed up it appeared that he had made a mistake and refunded $5,450 instead of $450. When I told him, he started crying and moaning that he was going to lose his job. When I said "just reverse the refund" he told me that that was not possible and that the financial department wouid only accept a return of the excess in the form of gift cards, purchased from Walmart or Target. Unfortunately, I fell for that and lost about $15K doing that. Another reason I kept doing that was that he showed me a snapshot of my savings account and all of a sudden it showed only $2.90 instead of the amount I had there which was considerably more. Under that threat I continued purchasing the gift cards and reading the numbers on the back of the cards to the person over my cell phone.

Finally, even though he said not to call the bank or do anything else on my computer, I figured it could not get any worse and I called the bank which immediately closed my account; then I called the credit card companies and asked to close those accounts and send new cards. I also filed a police report.

I called Sophos to see if they were really out of business and was told that, no, they were not out of business and they were aware of the scam. When I asked why they did not send out emails warning their clients of the scam they said they did but I never saw any notices. I called back numerous times and spoke with Supervisor Naved who kept telling me they were discussing the situation and trying to figure out what to do. The final time I spoke with him he said that they had decided to provide a lifetime of free internet protection and that they would not offer any financial recompense. After my experience, I really don't to have anything to do with them, free or otherwise. Somehow someone hacked into their client list. How else could they have found me? I think it would have gone a low way for them to step up to the plate and offer their clients some financial compensation, even if not all of it. 

So my opinion is very low of the way Sophos handled that situation. Their client list was hacked. Their clients had nothing to do with that. I think they should have accepted some responsibillity for this incident. I cannot in good conscience recommend that anyone deal with this company and for their current clients to look elsewhere for internet protection.

Sincerely,

Peter W. Stoelzl