A Cybersecurity Warning for Treasure Coast & Palm Beach County Businesses
It’s February, and tax season is already picking up speed. Accountants are getting busier, bookkeepers are organizing records, and business owners across the Treasure Coast and Palm Beaches are thinking about W-2s, 1099s, and looming IRS deadlines. But the first real tax-season problem most small businesses face isn’t a form or a filing error — it’s a cyber scam. And the most common one shows up long before April because it’s simple, believable, and aimed directly at small and mid-sized businesses.
This scam often starts quietly, with an email that lands in the inbox of someone who handles payroll or HR. The message looks like it’s from the company owner, CEO, or another executive. It’s short, polite, and urgent, asking for copies of all employee W-2s for a meeting with the accountant. The tone feels normal. The request sounds reasonable for this time of year. The urgency seems typical during tax season. So the employee sends the documents.
Except the email wasn’t from the CEO at all. It was sent by a cybercriminal using a spoofed email address or a look-alike domain designed to trick your staff. Once those W-2s are sent, the attacker now has a complete package of highly sensitive personal information: full legal names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and salary details. That’s everything needed to commit identity theft and file fraudulent tax returns before your employees even realize what happened.
Most companies don’t discover the problem right away. Instead, employees find out weeks later when they try to file their tax return and receive a rejection notice saying a return has already been filed under their Social Security number. Someone else has already claimed their refund. Now that employee is dealing with the IRS, credit monitoring services, identity theft protection, and months of paperwork — all because of a single email they never even knew existed. When this happens to multiple employees, it quickly turns into more than a cybersecurity issue. It becomes an HR crisis, a trust issue inside your organization, and potentially even a legal and reputational problem for the business.
The reason this W-2 scam works so well is because it doesn’t look like an obvious phishing attempt. It doesn’t mention foreign bank accounts or suspicious links. The timing is perfect, since W-2 requests are completely normal in February. The request itself is believable, and the message often appears to come from someone employees trust. Cybercriminals do their homework. They research company leaders, staff roles, and even outside accountants to make their emails sound realistic. In a busy office, employees want to be helpful and responsive, especially to leadership. Urgency overrides verification, and that’s exactly what attackers count on.
The good news is this scam is highly preventable with the right combination of policies, cybersecurity protections, and employee awareness. Businesses should have a strict rule that W-2s and other sensitive payroll documents are never sent through email, no matter who appears to be asking. Any request involving employee tax documents should always be verified through a second channel, such as a phone call or in-person confirmation, using contact information you already have on file — not what’s listed in the email. Taking 30 seconds to double-check can prevent months of damage control.
This is also the time of year to remind payroll and HR staff that tax-related phishing scams spike dramatically before April. A quick team meeting to explain what these emails look like and how to respond can make a major difference. On the technical side, multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be enabled on all payroll, HR, and email systems. Even if login credentials are stolen, MFA adds another layer of defense that can stop attackers from getting further. Just as important, business owners should encourage a culture where employees feel comfortable questioning unusual requests, even if they appear to come from senior leadership. When verification is supported instead of criticized, scams have fewer chances to succeed.
Unfortunately, the W-2 scam is only the beginning of what small businesses in South Florida can expect during tax season. From now through April, companies often see an increase in fake IRS notices demanding immediate payment, phishing emails disguised as tax software updates, spoofed messages pretending to be from accountants, and fraudulent invoices that look like legitimate tax expenses. Cybercriminals love tax season because everyone is moving quickly, financial requests feel routine, and distractions are everywhere.
Businesses that get through tax season without incident aren’t just lucky — they’re prepared. They have clear policies around sensitive information, trained employees who know what to look for, and cybersecurity systems that catch suspicious activity before it turns into a data breach. For small and mid-sized businesses in Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, and across the Treasure Coast, this kind of preparation is no longer optional. It’s part of running a responsible, secure business.
At Capstone IT, we help South Florida businesses strengthen their cybersecurity, protect employee data, and put practical safeguards in place during high-risk times like tax season. If you’re not sure your payroll systems, email security, and internal verification policies are strong enough, now is the time to find out — before a scam hits.
Book a quick 10-minute discovery call and we’ll review your payroll and HR security, multi-factor authentication setup, email protections against spoofing, and one simple policy change that many businesses overlook. And if your company is already in great shape, chances are you know another business owner who isn’t. Feel free to share this with them — it could save them from a very expensive tax-season headache.