I work for a construction company with three offices — two of them in Michigan and one in Florida. I’m a one-man shop and handle all things IT for all three locations as well as our multiple mobile sites. Since I live in Michigan, I spend most of my time between the two offices located there. It was luck, coincidence, the Force, or pure randomness that I happened to be in the office where this story began.

It was a dark and stormy night… Well, actually it was the middle of the day and it was only overcast with our on-site supervisors on how to use his computer, when I was interrupted by a phone call from our other office. I was informed there was someone on the phone who claimed he was from Dell. This caller said computers were sent to the office I was at in error and he wanted to speak with me. I asked the woman who was transferring this call to tell the caller I wasn’t available and that nothing had been delivered. I went back to my training session and didn’t think twice about it.

About an hour later a large delivery truck pulled up to the front of our office, and the driver came in and said he had a delivery from Dell of 17 packages…

I looked over the shipper and there was our company name along with the correct address. I asked him to hang on for a minute and I went to call my Dell rep. When I opened my email to get his contact information, I noticed the lady from the other office had sent me the name and phone number of the guy who tried to talk with me earlier about some Dell equipment.

“What the heck,” I figured, and I gave him a call.

The call clarity was very poor and he had a heavy accent so I had a hard time understanding him. I told him I had some equipment I didn’t order that was being delivered. He said that it was sent to the wrong place in error and after accepting it he would issue me an RMA and have it picked up.

I proceeded to tell him that I wasn’t going to accept the delivery or even let them unload the truck. He didn’t try to push the issue and said he would contact the shipping company to have it redirected to the correct address. I rejected the load and went about my day.

I thought about this for a while, and when I had a moment, I logged into our Dell Premier site to have a look. To my surprise there was an order on our account for 17 Latitude E6430s. I was still thinking that there was some mistake with customer numbers and the order somehow was placed under our account. I attempted to call my Dell contact, but the number wouldn’t go through.

Since this was around the time of the Oklahoma tornados and some big storms in Texas, I figured there were some phone issues and sent him an email to call when he had a chance. Over the next two days I tried to call and sent another message, but I got no response. This was heading into a three-day holiday weekend, and so I just figured he had taken some vacation time; I would try again after the weekend.

Tuesday came and I again tried to contact Dell with the same results.

At this point I was wondering if I had the wrong number. I dug into my old contacts and came up with our previous rep’s contact info and gave her a call. She answered on the third ring. After explaining what was going on, she confirmed that an order was placed — by a Dell rep I’d never heard of before. She sent an email to the rep that placed the order and to a few others and copied me on the email.

Meanwhile my cell phone rang. It was the truck driver trying to confirm the delivery address for a Dell delivery. After he gave me an address I’d never heard of, I told him this was the wrong address and that he should have his dispatch contact Dell about where this was to be delivered.

A few minutes later the dispatcher contacted me. I explained I was in contact with Dell and that the items were not ordered by me and that I would reject them. I also told them that the address he had for delivery was wrong, since I was in Michigan and I was later to learn they were trying to deliver somewhere in California.

About an hour later the rep called me to discuss the situation. During our discussion it was determined that someone posing as our company’s “purchasing manager” (there’s no such position in our company) with the name of one of our company’s executives had contacted her via email about purchasing 17 laptops.

After some back and forth, the order was placed under the “ships fast” designation. During our conversation, she did a three-way calling with the person who placed the order. Again the lack of call clarity and the man’s heavy accent made it hard to understand.

She did all the talking, but the man identified himself and confirmed delivery of the items shipped from Dell. After she disconnected with him, I let her know that I had rejected the order twice now and that they should call the delivery company to see about getting the items back. It was late in the day so I went home, but she had my cell number and I told her to call me if she needed anything else.

The next day, I sent her an email asking if there were any updates. She called me to inform me that Dell’s fraud department was investigating and that we should just keep rejecting the delivery. She said it normally takes three rejections before the shipping company will return the packages.

At this point I explained to her in much more detail how they had tried to deliver this twice now and that if they did not contact the delivery company that their product was going to disappear. With this information she was going to call the fraud department back and fill them in. Meanwhile, I remembered the contact information that was sent to me for the guy claiming to be from Dell. I sent this to her and she called me back immediately. While on the phone with her, she set up a three-way call with him (again call clarity was bad and the speaker had a heavy accent).

When she asked to speak to the name I was given he said that was him. When she asked for his last name, I did not hear it but she did. When she identified herself as being from Dell and asked why he had called one of her customers about equipment being delivered to the wrong address, he began to deny know anything and that this number was a private number.

After a few more minutes of back and forth, she let him know that this incident was being reported and he would more than likely be getting a few follow-up phone calls. After disconnecting I told her that it sounded like the guy I spoke with a few days before. She told me she would call me back in a little while once she had more to pass on.

A few hours later she called me back. She began by thanking me many times for pushing the issue with her and that the equipment was on its way back to Dell as we spoke. They were able to verify that after I had rejected the shipment the first time, they had gotten the shipment redirected to a residential address in California.

I’m now working with Dell to put passphrases or PINs on all our company accounts so that only a designee or myself can place orders.

Have you dealt with any scams? What did you learn and what should others watch out for? Share your stories and thoughts in the comments below!

This is the 204th article in the Spotlight on IT series. If you're interested in writing an article for the series PM Lee S or send him email (lees@spiceworks.com) to get started.