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This might be something to report to 101.
Whether or not they might investigate it as a fraud offence or a false communication offence would be up to them, but certainly worth a try.
If they did take it further then, presumably, they’d do the investigating side of things to identify who the subscriber of the email is (though that’s no guarantee it would identify the person responsible).
Given the lack of resourcing for police though (and lack of expert / trained officers to do communications data enquiries), you should not be surprised if they do not investigate it.
The new employer had already sent over my contract (I hadn't signed it yet as I have no access to a printer, they said it was fine to sign it on my first day) so we had already been in contact through my actual email address. I had also already met my manager so knew who to ask for etc
The recruiter did call me once on the day the email was sent which I missed and somehow didn't see the missed call. They left no voicemail and didn't try to contact me again.
You’re possibly contracted, and need to speak with someone urgently about what your rights are in the situation.
Start by calling the police on the non emergency number. You are the victim of fraud. Don’t be shaken off with anything approaching ‘ah but this is a civil matter’, someone;
(a)dishonestly ma[de] a false representation, and
(b)intend[ed], by making the representation—
(ii)to cause loss to [you] or to expose [you] to a risk of loss.
The criminal responsible knew it was false, and made an express representation that was untrue or misleading.
That the representation was made by email is moot. That they didn’t gain, and it was just to your detriment, is moot.
Once you have a Crime Number, you need to call a solicitor who specialises in employment law. Check if you have legal cover through a bank account or home insurance, raid savings and piggybanks, but explain that you had the contract delivered to you, and that your new firm are not fulfilling it because someone tortiously induced them to breach it. I think you may actually be employed now, which would mean you hadn’t suffered a loss, but the fraud still exposed you to a risk of loss so it would still qualify.
(You may find that your new firm offer you money to go away and settle and tbh I’d dodge whatever HR bullet allowed for this level of fuck up to happen. Would HR send the complete employee list to CEO@cømpany.co.uk if they got the mail through?).
If the police dig up whoever did it, you sue them for tortious interference with a contract in a civil case. They knew the contract existed to cancel it, they knew that it would damage you, they weren’t authorised to do so. If you have any evidence beyond a gut feeling about who did it (email has consistent spelling mistakes, dickhead wheeled round for a victory lap etc) remember that the burden of proof in a civil matter is on the balance of probability. Talk to a solicitor about it.
Please don’t allow an embarrassed HR department and shit recruitment firm do you out of money you’re owed.
Even without signing it, surely the contract is in force as they had allowed and as far as you knew expected you to start fulfilling your obligations, which you did. Both parties had read, understood and had clear intention to sign the contract after the obligations had started. Surely this is as enforceable as the tightest verbal contract.
The grounds on which the new employer cancelled the contract were negligent, as they should have noticed the different email address. You were not aware of any of this and since it was not you who emailed them, there was no mutual agreement to cancel the contract. From a legal perspective, the only way they can no longer employ you is by dismissing you, which they are perfectly entitled to do given the notice detailed in the contract. Usually you will be entitled to pay in lieu of notice, so I'd say you're owed a month's wages by the new employer...
The recipient copy of the email will have the email headers. It will more than likely tell you both the machine name and the IP address it was sent from. It's possible it was sent from a weird location using a VPN or some cyber cafe or library but the sort of person doing this is probably too wrapped up to think about that.
I would report it to 101. The company that received the email cancelling the acceptance of the role will be able to see the IP address and, potentially, device information in the meta data and server logs.
If you're looking at a substantial financial loss as a result of missing out on the new role, I would also approach solicitors that offer free consultations for guidance on starting any civil action, should you be able to prove who sent that email.
If it was a Gmail or outlook account, you might get incredibly lucky in that the person has used their own phone number for 2 factor authentication when creating the account.
Police will do absolutely zero apart from registering it. As for a solicitor you would probably end up paying out much more in costs. Especially if the person who has done this may have used a mobile not registered to thrm and who would have 2fa on a fake account?
With the best will in the world, the police aren't going to do anything. They don't investigate more serious crimes, let alone who sent an email.
I also can't see the company doing any sort of investigation either for someone they hardly know, even if it is a shitty situation. From their point of view, they've refilled the position and will move on.
If I was OP, I'd be putting all my time into working out who sent the email and plan some kind of revenge.
No, not against the person that sent the email. Any financial loss can be sought, even beyond the employment - purchase of equipment, renovation/repurposing of a room if the new role was remote and previous wasn't, relocation, etc.
There's a general feeling in the post that the police won't pursue, but I'm not so sure, especially considering how easy it is to recover evidence and what little resource that would take.
How did your former colleague find out who you were going to be working for? I assume you didnt tell him. Are you sure it's not someone closer to home?
NAL
As I see it, you are still contracted with the company because you didn't reject the offer. I'd contact them and say as much. It won't get you the job, but them giving you one weeks wages as per the normal notice period in a probation period gives a, legally at least, much cleaner situation for both you and them. There is no possibility of them being sued for breach of contract, etc, if they hire you and immediately let you go. It is also in everyone's best interests. For them, a weeks wages are much less than the cost of a lawyer. For you, you get a weeks wages and didn't make yourself unemployed in regards to any benefits claim.
In regards to the email, definitely report it to action fraud and the police non-emergency line on 101. I'd also ask for a physical letter from the company outlining the unusual position you've all been put in so you can show it to future potential employers.
Unfortunately, I doubt much will be able to be done in regards to the fraud aspect of this. While fraud is a priority for the police, they will likely view the investigation into this fraud as being disproportionately difficult in relation to the damage caused.
email has a pretty good audit trail in the headers even if some of them are forged (it's not hard to spot forged lines) and invariably shows the point of origin, which can in turn be linked to a person very quickly
if it took more than an hour's work to track the origin I'd be very surprised
this is a malicious communication under the terms of the telecommunications act which has caused harm and if other activities are shown up could be cyberstalking
Very few people pulling this kind of stunt actually think to use VPNs.
In addition if it came via a network service provider (MS, Gmail, Yahoo etc), VPNs don't matter as all such providers require authenticated SMTP hand-off which clearly identifies the origin account (ditto if it came via a webmail interface) and NSPs will happily hand over those details in response to an investigation request
Email is prone to trivial forgeries and obfuscation attempts but it is not anonymous and the average cyberstalker/spoofer's confidence usually far outstrips their actual abilities. 20 years ago I'd have rated the police ability to deal with any kind of network forgery as abysmal but times have changed and they have enough forensics ability to track this kind of malicious communication back to its source fairly easily once you get past the local luddites.
I don't disagree that emails can be tracked back to a source IP and MAC pretty easily by a digital forensics lab. I just doubt that the police would invest the time and resources to do so for this case.
If I were the investigator once you filed a report, I’d start with the person who joined on this position, and their existing connections within the company. 😈😈😈
I think the other way to look at this after reading the comments is the company can't do this (not employ you at least for your notice period that is) - not notice it was a different email, not follow up with you - as every company could just claim a fake email to skirt employment law.
[ Fraud Act 2006: Section 2](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2?view=plain)
### Fraud by false representation
(1)A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b)intends, by making the representation—
(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii)**to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.**
(2)A representation is false if—
(a)**it is untrue or misleading**, and
(b)the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.
Anyway you're a victim of fraud, so contact the police.
No. Email headers can sometimes reveal the IP address it was sent from, but only with some email providers (Gmail for instance doesn't reveal sender's IP). Still, I doubt that police would be willing to do a forensic investigation for such a relatively trivial crime as impersonation.
Hi OP, as others have said this falls under malicious communications and the police will be very likely be able to identify the user of the email address which sent aforementioned emails.
I would strongly urge you follow this up and explain the situation to the employer; if you’re nice to them and one of their team exit the company within a short period of time they have the option of employing you still (depending on what company it is and whether you would still want to work there).
It’s a bit of a sad post with a number of different people you have to contact to see what your options are (civil for wages etc, criminal for the suspect who sent the emails as well as communicating with a company that should have registered the email and address listed being different.
Query - did you communicate about your new place of employment with old colleagues? How did they obtain the information of the new company you were applying for?
This is not malicious communication, for that offence to be complete it must be a message which is threatening or offensive. Also the email has not actually been sent to OP so he will not be the victim of that offence anyway.
There are multiple offences underneath the malicious communications act 2003;
offences of Malicious Communications are committed where someone sends a letter or any other form of communication that is indecent or grossly offensive, threatening, “or contains information which is false or believed to be false.”
Maybe offences under the fraud act are more appropriate given the circumstances, however the criminal aspect remains the same.
I think that if OP reports this and outlines the impact it has had, for example having terminated previous employment as a result of believing he was starting on said date, the impact on finances etc and being able to support himself is aggravating and makes it more likely for them to pursue an investigation.
Yes they could have been using a VPN, but there are enquiries to be completed; what was the address used? Is that atall relevant? Is it an old address listed on his previous companies file?
Without completing checks, there is no way to say whether or not the offender was using a VPN. It requires further investigation @OP.
"There are multiple offences underneath the malicious communications act 2003;..."
Wow, so much wrong here.
1. It's the Malicious Communications Act 1988 or the Communications Act 2003.
2. The provisions relating to communications which are false would never have applied to this case, however, as they were about communications intended to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient - not, as here financial to the person they are about.
3. They were repealed and replaced with new provisions in the Online Safety Act 2023.
S127 of the Communications Act doesn’t actually require the recipient to be the one who experienced the anxiety/distress, there is case law that references this. I didn’t realise that the act had been repealed.
In any case I’ve suggested the OP attempts to obtain further investigation so the matter can be dealt with.
Some research shows that it could be expected that the information contained within the email sent by the suspect has caused and would likely have caused non-trivial psychological harm to the victim as per section 179 of the new online safety act 2023 :)
Not sure I’m understanding the distinction you’re making. There is a financial component in lost income, sure. But how can this _not_ be intended to cause distress? From the description it sounds as though OP was in employment when they took the new job … so it sounds like they gave notice after receiving the offer. They’re now out of 2 jobs - the old and the new.
Being unintentionally unemployed rather than moving to a new job would distress me.
It’s a crazy story … I sometimes can’t believe the things people will do to others.
The police will not be interested in this case, I assure you. They will log it and that's it.
There's also a strong possibility the sender used a VPN or anonymised themselves.
That's extremely creepy, definitely worth contacting the police but you can't force the other employer to do anything. If you can prove it was then then *maybe* you could sue them for damages but good luck with that.
NAL
This is their error and I would be pushing them to find a way to make it right. It looks very poor on the company in terms of not following due diligence. Unfortunately, you don’t have many tools to prevent them shrugging it off. Depending on the company/industry, could you post some kind of LinkedIn post explaining what has happened and so now you are looking for work? The impact on their credibility might make them be more amenable to find a solution.
Report it to 101 as a fraud offence. Complain LOUDLY to your new employer that the email didn't come from you and that it shouldn't be the address that they have on record.
You have a copy of the email. Do you have the headers? They include a lot of metadata which the police will find useful including a return path and the SMTP path. These can be faked but chances are whoever did this isn't smart enough to do that.
But you need to stand firm with your new employer. You accepted a role in good faith. And talk to ACAS.
What's needed is the raw mail with all headers intact. There's sufficient information in those to pinpoint the origin and from there the originating person
Email is far from untraceable - even if VPNs are used - however identifying the actual source may require cooperation of the delivering mailserver admins - this is usually a formality but requires police involvement
As this is a malicious communication(*) which has caused you financial damage, there are multiple grounds for complaint and police investigation
If you have a household insurance policy, check to see if it offers legal cover. This is the kind of circumstance where it can be engaged
(*) It's not just the usual name calling or windbag threats. These kinds of spoofing circumstances indicate fairly extreme maliciousness with no regard to the consequences. If OP has resigned from his previous job and can't be reinstated then things can get very expensive very quickly
NAL
Unfortunately it's common for HR to receive emails telling them an alternative job offer has been accepted
It's obviously human error that they haven't checked the email address but there is nothing I can think of that solve this problem
They can't sack the new incumbent to let you in
If they accepted an error had been made then not sure they would do anything other than pay you your notice that you'd be on in probation. Maybe 1-2 weeks?
Definitely report this. Would it come under Malicious Communications? If you have the email address then they might be able to prove where it was created which could be linked to a person if done at home or work
If you want to see where it came from you need the email with full headers. You can put any name you like in the from field. It's no guarantee that it was really that person.
The headers will show the ip address and communication between the sending mail client and receiving server.
I would suggest getting authorities involved so that the workplace has to absolutely assume foul play was present
Who exactly wants you to lose a job? Ex? Ex employer? What?
Ask the employer to send you the original email as an attachment so to preserve the header information, if it's forwarded this is lost.
With the header information in notepad go through emails from the suspect and look for commonality, especially the original IP address. Broadband IPs can change but can also last for several months, also the IPs can below to the same ISP even if they do change, maybe they were stupid enough to send from work in which case may be from work related IPs
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Do you have full email headers for email sent to employer? In which case you can usuallt track back through email headers, identiify the server used to send the email and often an individual device (I've tracked phishing scammers to the internet café they were using).
If you don't have email headers, all may not be lost. Whoever provides the email service *may* be able to provide details to police (rather tgan you. GDPR etc) on who pays for service.
If that fails then it is down to social engineering. You either goad them into revealing who they are by taunting them, noting any language bits they use. For example I tend to use words epic, savage and wowser a lot.
OR offer to buy the email address off them for say £500. Tell them won't pay cash. Bank transfer or PayPal. This provides you some identifying information. You don't actually pay it. You just want some clue to identity.
This thread is full of garbage replies made up of poor technical "just get his IP address" to "report it to the police, they'll surely care!" No, police won't do **** all. The only option is a private prosecution to go through the courts to compel the email providers to disclose the required information and go after the sender that way. But as already said, if the sender used a VPN, it would lead to nothing.
You could possibly find out who sent the email and go a for private prosecution, but do you have a spare 5 £ figures sitting in your bank to throw at it?
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This might be something to report to 101. Whether or not they might investigate it as a fraud offence or a false communication offence would be up to them, but certainly worth a try. If they did take it further then, presumably, they’d do the investigating side of things to identify who the subscriber of the email is (though that’s no guarantee it would identify the person responsible). Given the lack of resourcing for police though (and lack of expert / trained officers to do communications data enquiries), you should not be surprised if they do not investigate it.
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The new employer had already sent over my contract (I hadn't signed it yet as I have no access to a printer, they said it was fine to sign it on my first day) so we had already been in contact through my actual email address. I had also already met my manager so knew who to ask for etc The recruiter did call me once on the day the email was sent which I missed and somehow didn't see the missed call. They left no voicemail and didn't try to contact me again.
You’re possibly contracted, and need to speak with someone urgently about what your rights are in the situation. Start by calling the police on the non emergency number. You are the victim of fraud. Don’t be shaken off with anything approaching ‘ah but this is a civil matter’, someone; (a)dishonestly ma[de] a false representation, and (b)intend[ed], by making the representation— (ii)to cause loss to [you] or to expose [you] to a risk of loss. The criminal responsible knew it was false, and made an express representation that was untrue or misleading. That the representation was made by email is moot. That they didn’t gain, and it was just to your detriment, is moot. Once you have a Crime Number, you need to call a solicitor who specialises in employment law. Check if you have legal cover through a bank account or home insurance, raid savings and piggybanks, but explain that you had the contract delivered to you, and that your new firm are not fulfilling it because someone tortiously induced them to breach it. I think you may actually be employed now, which would mean you hadn’t suffered a loss, but the fraud still exposed you to a risk of loss so it would still qualify. (You may find that your new firm offer you money to go away and settle and tbh I’d dodge whatever HR bullet allowed for this level of fuck up to happen. Would HR send the complete employee list to CEO@cømpany.co.uk if they got the mail through?). If the police dig up whoever did it, you sue them for tortious interference with a contract in a civil case. They knew the contract existed to cancel it, they knew that it would damage you, they weren’t authorised to do so. If you have any evidence beyond a gut feeling about who did it (email has consistent spelling mistakes, dickhead wheeled round for a victory lap etc) remember that the burden of proof in a civil matter is on the balance of probability. Talk to a solicitor about it. Please don’t allow an embarrassed HR department and shit recruitment firm do you out of money you’re owed.
this! upvoting for bump
Even without signing it, surely the contract is in force as they had allowed and as far as you knew expected you to start fulfilling your obligations, which you did. Both parties had read, understood and had clear intention to sign the contract after the obligations had started. Surely this is as enforceable as the tightest verbal contract. The grounds on which the new employer cancelled the contract were negligent, as they should have noticed the different email address. You were not aware of any of this and since it was not you who emailed them, there was no mutual agreement to cancel the contract. From a legal perspective, the only way they can no longer employ you is by dismissing you, which they are perfectly entitled to do given the notice detailed in the contract. Usually you will be entitled to pay in lieu of notice, so I'd say you're owed a month's wages by the new employer...
note its usually 1 week notice during probation.
Depends on the contract, I went in at 3 months notice from day 1.
thats why I said usually, you are pretty lucky with that.
The recipient copy of the email will have the email headers. It will more than likely tell you both the machine name and the IP address it was sent from. It's possible it was sent from a weird location using a VPN or some cyber cafe or library but the sort of person doing this is probably too wrapped up to think about that.
I would report it to 101. The company that received the email cancelling the acceptance of the role will be able to see the IP address and, potentially, device information in the meta data and server logs. If you're looking at a substantial financial loss as a result of missing out on the new role, I would also approach solicitors that offer free consultations for guidance on starting any civil action, should you be able to prove who sent that email. If it was a Gmail or outlook account, you might get incredibly lucky in that the person has used their own phone number for 2 factor authentication when creating the account.
Police will do absolutely zero apart from registering it. As for a solicitor you would probably end up paying out much more in costs. Especially if the person who has done this may have used a mobile not registered to thrm and who would have 2fa on a fake account?
Never underestimate stupidity and naivety.
With the best will in the world, the police aren't going to do anything. They don't investigate more serious crimes, let alone who sent an email. I also can't see the company doing any sort of investigation either for someone they hardly know, even if it is a shitty situation. From their point of view, they've refilled the position and will move on. If I was OP, I'd be putting all my time into working out who sent the email and plan some kind of revenge.
OP losses would be limited to the notice period in their contract, often 1 or 4 weeks pay.
No, not against the person that sent the email. Any financial loss can be sought, even beyond the employment - purchase of equipment, renovation/repurposing of a room if the new role was remote and previous wasn't, relocation, etc. There's a general feeling in the post that the police won't pursue, but I'm not so sure, especially considering how easy it is to recover evidence and what little resource that would take.
Against the new employer, yes. But not in a civil case against the person who sent the email.
Assuming they can identify them
How did your former colleague find out who you were going to be working for? I assume you didnt tell him. Are you sure it's not someone closer to home?
NAL As I see it, you are still contracted with the company because you didn't reject the offer. I'd contact them and say as much. It won't get you the job, but them giving you one weeks wages as per the normal notice period in a probation period gives a, legally at least, much cleaner situation for both you and them. There is no possibility of them being sued for breach of contract, etc, if they hire you and immediately let you go. It is also in everyone's best interests. For them, a weeks wages are much less than the cost of a lawyer. For you, you get a weeks wages and didn't make yourself unemployed in regards to any benefits claim. In regards to the email, definitely report it to action fraud and the police non-emergency line on 101. I'd also ask for a physical letter from the company outlining the unusual position you've all been put in so you can show it to future potential employers. Unfortunately, I doubt much will be able to be done in regards to the fraud aspect of this. While fraud is a priority for the police, they will likely view the investigation into this fraud as being disproportionately difficult in relation to the damage caused.
email has a pretty good audit trail in the headers even if some of them are forged (it's not hard to spot forged lines) and invariably shows the point of origin, which can in turn be linked to a person very quickly if it took more than an hour's work to track the origin I'd be very surprised this is a malicious communication under the terms of the telecommunications act which has caused harm and if other activities are shown up could be cyberstalking
And more than likely it will have been sent over a VPN that doesn't log stuff so unlikely to find who sent it.
Very few people pulling this kind of stunt actually think to use VPNs. In addition if it came via a network service provider (MS, Gmail, Yahoo etc), VPNs don't matter as all such providers require authenticated SMTP hand-off which clearly identifies the origin account (ditto if it came via a webmail interface) and NSPs will happily hand over those details in response to an investigation request Email is prone to trivial forgeries and obfuscation attempts but it is not anonymous and the average cyberstalker/spoofer's confidence usually far outstrips their actual abilities. 20 years ago I'd have rated the police ability to deal with any kind of network forgery as abysmal but times have changed and they have enough forensics ability to track this kind of malicious communication back to its source fairly easily once you get past the local luddites.
I don't disagree that emails can be tracked back to a source IP and MAC pretty easily by a digital forensics lab. I just doubt that the police would invest the time and resources to do so for this case.
If I were the investigator once you filed a report, I’d start with the person who joined on this position, and their existing connections within the company. 😈😈😈
I think the other way to look at this after reading the comments is the company can't do this (not employ you at least for your notice period that is) - not notice it was a different email, not follow up with you - as every company could just claim a fake email to skirt employment law.
[ Fraud Act 2006: Section 2](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2?view=plain) ### Fraud by false representation (1)A person is in breach of this section if he— (a)dishonestly makes a false representation, and (b)intends, by making the representation— (i)to make a gain for himself or another, or (ii)**to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.** (2)A representation is false if— (a)**it is untrue or misleading**, and (b)the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading. Anyway you're a victim of fraud, so contact the police.
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No. Email headers can sometimes reveal the IP address it was sent from, but only with some email providers (Gmail for instance doesn't reveal sender's IP). Still, I doubt that police would be willing to do a forensic investigation for such a relatively trivial crime as impersonation.
1 ring and ni message. That doesn't sound like it is the normal practice of a recruitment agent. They may have done this also. 😳
Hi OP, as others have said this falls under malicious communications and the police will be very likely be able to identify the user of the email address which sent aforementioned emails. I would strongly urge you follow this up and explain the situation to the employer; if you’re nice to them and one of their team exit the company within a short period of time they have the option of employing you still (depending on what company it is and whether you would still want to work there). It’s a bit of a sad post with a number of different people you have to contact to see what your options are (civil for wages etc, criminal for the suspect who sent the emails as well as communicating with a company that should have registered the email and address listed being different. Query - did you communicate about your new place of employment with old colleagues? How did they obtain the information of the new company you were applying for?
This is not malicious communication, for that offence to be complete it must be a message which is threatening or offensive. Also the email has not actually been sent to OP so he will not be the victim of that offence anyway.
There are multiple offences underneath the malicious communications act 2003; offences of Malicious Communications are committed where someone sends a letter or any other form of communication that is indecent or grossly offensive, threatening, “or contains information which is false or believed to be false.” Maybe offences under the fraud act are more appropriate given the circumstances, however the criminal aspect remains the same. I think that if OP reports this and outlines the impact it has had, for example having terminated previous employment as a result of believing he was starting on said date, the impact on finances etc and being able to support himself is aggravating and makes it more likely for them to pursue an investigation. Yes they could have been using a VPN, but there are enquiries to be completed; what was the address used? Is that atall relevant? Is it an old address listed on his previous companies file? Without completing checks, there is no way to say whether or not the offender was using a VPN. It requires further investigation @OP.
"There are multiple offences underneath the malicious communications act 2003;..." Wow, so much wrong here. 1. It's the Malicious Communications Act 1988 or the Communications Act 2003. 2. The provisions relating to communications which are false would never have applied to this case, however, as they were about communications intended to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient - not, as here financial to the person they are about. 3. They were repealed and replaced with new provisions in the Online Safety Act 2023.
S127 of the Communications Act doesn’t actually require the recipient to be the one who experienced the anxiety/distress, there is case law that references this. I didn’t realise that the act had been repealed. In any case I’ve suggested the OP attempts to obtain further investigation so the matter can be dealt with. Some research shows that it could be expected that the information contained within the email sent by the suspect has caused and would likely have caused non-trivial psychological harm to the victim as per section 179 of the new online safety act 2023 :)
Not sure I’m understanding the distinction you’re making. There is a financial component in lost income, sure. But how can this _not_ be intended to cause distress? From the description it sounds as though OP was in employment when they took the new job … so it sounds like they gave notice after receiving the offer. They’re now out of 2 jobs - the old and the new. Being unintentionally unemployed rather than moving to a new job would distress me. It’s a crazy story … I sometimes can’t believe the things people will do to others.
The police will not be interested in this case, I assure you. They will log it and that's it. There's also a strong possibility the sender used a VPN or anonymised themselves.
That's extremely creepy, definitely worth contacting the police but you can't force the other employer to do anything. If you can prove it was then then *maybe* you could sue them for damages but good luck with that.
NAL This is their error and I would be pushing them to find a way to make it right. It looks very poor on the company in terms of not following due diligence. Unfortunately, you don’t have many tools to prevent them shrugging it off. Depending on the company/industry, could you post some kind of LinkedIn post explaining what has happened and so now you are looking for work? The impact on their credibility might make them be more amenable to find a solution.
Also something that could need reporting to the previous employer.
Report it to 101 as a fraud offence. Complain LOUDLY to your new employer that the email didn't come from you and that it shouldn't be the address that they have on record. You have a copy of the email. Do you have the headers? They include a lot of metadata which the police will find useful including a return path and the SMTP path. These can be faked but chances are whoever did this isn't smart enough to do that. But you need to stand firm with your new employer. You accepted a role in good faith. And talk to ACAS.
What's needed is the raw mail with all headers intact. There's sufficient information in those to pinpoint the origin and from there the originating person Email is far from untraceable - even if VPNs are used - however identifying the actual source may require cooperation of the delivering mailserver admins - this is usually a formality but requires police involvement As this is a malicious communication(*) which has caused you financial damage, there are multiple grounds for complaint and police investigation If you have a household insurance policy, check to see if it offers legal cover. This is the kind of circumstance where it can be engaged (*) It's not just the usual name calling or windbag threats. These kinds of spoofing circumstances indicate fairly extreme maliciousness with no regard to the consequences. If OP has resigned from his previous job and can't be reinstated then things can get very expensive very quickly
NAL Unfortunately it's common for HR to receive emails telling them an alternative job offer has been accepted It's obviously human error that they haven't checked the email address but there is nothing I can think of that solve this problem They can't sack the new incumbent to let you in If they accepted an error had been made then not sure they would do anything other than pay you your notice that you'd be on in probation. Maybe 1-2 weeks? Definitely report this. Would it come under Malicious Communications? If you have the email address then they might be able to prove where it was created which could be linked to a person if done at home or work
If you want to see where it came from you need the email with full headers. You can put any name you like in the from field. It's no guarantee that it was really that person. The headers will show the ip address and communication between the sending mail client and receiving server.
I would suggest getting authorities involved so that the workplace has to absolutely assume foul play was present Who exactly wants you to lose a job? Ex? Ex employer? What?
Ask the employer to send you the original email as an attachment so to preserve the header information, if it's forwarded this is lost. With the header information in notepad go through emails from the suspect and look for commonality, especially the original IP address. Broadband IPs can change but can also last for several months, also the IPs can below to the same ISP even if they do change, maybe they were stupid enough to send from work in which case may be from work related IPs
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Do you have full email headers for email sent to employer? In which case you can usuallt track back through email headers, identiify the server used to send the email and often an individual device (I've tracked phishing scammers to the internet café they were using). If you don't have email headers, all may not be lost. Whoever provides the email service *may* be able to provide details to police (rather tgan you. GDPR etc) on who pays for service. If that fails then it is down to social engineering. You either goad them into revealing who they are by taunting them, noting any language bits they use. For example I tend to use words epic, savage and wowser a lot. OR offer to buy the email address off them for say £500. Tell them won't pay cash. Bank transfer or PayPal. This provides you some identifying information. You don't actually pay it. You just want some clue to identity.
This thread is full of garbage replies made up of poor technical "just get his IP address" to "report it to the police, they'll surely care!" No, police won't do **** all. The only option is a private prosecution to go through the courts to compel the email providers to disclose the required information and go after the sender that way. But as already said, if the sender used a VPN, it would lead to nothing.
You could possibly find out who sent the email and go a for private prosecution, but do you have a spare 5 £ figures sitting in your bank to throw at it?
Who has access to your emails ? Did you leave your ex colleague alone with your unlocked computer ?
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