Your boss says pay the supplier today. The supplier has sent new bank details, and your boss texts from a new number to say send it. Get the right money to the right people before the bank's 3:30 cutoff.
Hi,
Kestrel's invoice 44817 for the Ferry St job is due today, $18,420.00. It's in the Bills folder. Please pay it from the bank before the cutoff.
I'm on the roof until about 3.
Thanks,
Jordan
Hello,
Following up on invoice 44817 for $18,420.00, due today.
After our mid-year audit, Kestrel has moved its banking. Starting this month, please send all payments to our new account and update your records. The details are in the attached letter. Payments sent to the old account will be returned, which could delay your order or put your account on credit hold.
Because of the change, please send today's payment by wire so it arrives before our month-end close, and reply with the confirmation once it's sent.
Thank you,
Lee Ostrowski
Accounts Receivable, Kestrel HVAC Supply
(973) 555-0148
On Tuesday, June 16, Lee Ostrowski <lee.ostrowski@kestrelhvacsupply.com> wrote:
Please find attached invoice 44817 for the Ferry St order: one 10-ton rooftop unit, curb adapter and controls. Total $18,420.00, terms net 30. Thank you for your business.
The attached letter is on Kestrel's letterhead, with its logo. It gives a routing number (which tells banks which bank the account is at) and a new account number ending in 7730.
| Supplier | Kestrel HVAC Supply |
|---|---|
| Contact | Lee Ostrowski, accounts receivable |
| Phone | (973) 555-0112 |
| ar@kestrelhvacsupply.com | |
| How we pay | ACH to the account ending 4471 |
| Terms | Net 30 (due 30 days after the invoice) |
| Last paid | Invoice 44102, $9,860.00, on June 12 |
Riverline Crane isn't in the file. Halloran has never used it.
| Jordan (cell) | (973) 555-0139 |
|---|---|
| Pat (cell) | (973) 555-0176 |
Balance: $61,240.18. One supplier is saved as a payee: Kestrel HVAC Supply, account ending 4471. A payee that's already saved can be paid by same-day ACH. A new payee can only be paid today by wire, which this bank sends within minutes.
A payee is a person or company the bank has saved as someone you pay. ACH is the normal bank-to-bank payment. A wire moves money in minutes and is very hard to pull back once it's sent.
In the game you can ask an AI about three of the messages. These are real answers from Claude, an AI made by Anthropic, to the question a 17-year-old in your seat might type, with the whole message pasted in. It was told not to look anything up. We asked each question six times, on three Claude models (the versions Claude Code used on November 11, 2026), and show the first answer from Opus, the most capable of the three. The runs went through Claude Code, Anthropic's tool for developers, told to answer like a chat app, so the Claude app may answer a little differently. We tested only Claude; other chatbots may answer differently too. The only change is that bold text and lists are shown in the page's own style.
About Lee's email:
No. Don't pay it the way that email says. It has the classic signs of a common scam called business email compromise. Criminals pose as a supplier and get the payment sent to their own account.
The biggest red flag is the email address. Look closely:
That's a different domain. Someone probably registered it because it looks almost the same. The name, the signature, the "RE:" subject and the logo on the PDF are all easy to fake.
Other warning signs:
What to do now:
You handled this well by stopping to ask. Scams like this fool experienced accountants all the time. Checking first and getting your boss involved is exactly the right call, and it isn't a decision you should have to make alone.
About the texts and the voice message from the new number:
I can't tell you for sure, but treat this as a scam until you prove otherwise. Don't send the money to the new account yet. Checking first was the right call.
Why this looks like fraud
This matches a very common scam aimed at small businesses:
What to do now
If it's fake
Tell Jordan, and warn Kestrel, because their email may have been hacked. Jordan or Pat can report it to the bank and to the FBI at ic3.gov.
If you already sent any money
Call the company's bank right away. Money can sometimes be stopped or recalled, but only if the bank hears about it within hours.
About the deadline
If this really is Jordan, waiting a few hours while you check won't hurt anything. Jordan can call Kestrel directly to keep the order moving. A real boss will be glad you checked. Losing $18,420 would be far worse than a delayed order, and a decision this size shouldn't rest on you alone.
Later, it's worth suggesting a company rule: any change to bank details gets confirmed by a phone call to a number already on file. You might also suggest a code word with Jordan for urgent money requests.
About the crane text from Jordan's saved number:
It might be real, but don't pay anything until you've checked with Jordan another way. This text has the classic signs of a common business scam:
Seeing "Jordan (cell)" on the text doesn't prove much. Scammers can fake the number a text comes from, and phones and accounts get hacked. And if it is a scam, calling 973-555-0163 just puts you on the phone with the scammer, who will say "yep, Riverline, we just need that card number."
What to do:
One small thing: phone numbers from 555-0100 to 555-0199 are reserved for movies and TV and aren't real business lines. If that's the exact number in the text and you didn't just change it to show me, that's another warning sign.
If you've already given out the card number, tell Pat or Jordan right away so they can call the card company. The sooner the better.
You're doing the right thing by checking first. Most people who get caught by this scam didn't stop to ask.
It came from Jordan's usual address and asked for nothing new: pay a bill that was due today, the normal way.
The sender's address has a hyphen, kestrel-hvacsupply.com. The June email quoted underneath shows the real one, kestrelhvacsupply.com. Then the usual signs: new bank details, a switch from the normal payment to a wire, "today", a threat (a credit hold, which means the supplier stops shipping until it's paid), and a request to confirm once it's sent. What made it convincing was real: the invoice number, the amount and the order. Someone had broken into a Kestrel mailbox and could read its real invoices. That's how some real cases start, like the Studco case below.
The phone number in the email was the scammer's. Calling it checks the message with the person who wrote it. So does replying to the email.
A new number, a reason not to use the old one, a rush, and "Pat already checked it", naming the one person you couldn't reach. The voice and the faces were made by AI from Jordan's and Pat's videos online. You couldn't have heard or seen the difference, and the game never asked you to. If you asked about the bet, the fakes dodged it and the call dropped. A question ended the Ferrari call too, and at Arup the fake finance chief gave orders and then left in a hurry. Both are below.
It was urgent, unusual and for a company Halloran had never used. But it came the usual way, from the number you already had. Nothing in it changed how money moves, it was under Pat's $2,000 card limit, and you could check it: Riverline's own website gives the same office number. It was also a clue, if you noticed: the phone that "died on the roof" was still texting.
A saved name isn't proof by itself, though. A text can be faked to show a saved name, and a phone can be taken over. When money is involved, call that saved number yourself rather than just texting back, and for a big amount get a second person to agree. No check is perfect: if someone stole the phone number itself, they can answer the calls too.
The first three go around the person asking, so they don't depend on spotting anything. The fourth asks the caller something only the real Jordan would know. That can work, as it did for Ferrari, but calling back on a number you already had is stronger, because someone who has read your messages might know the answer. The checks that didn't work all went back through the scammer: the number in the email, a reply to the email, and the new phone number.
The AI was more open to the real request than to the fakes, and its advice to check first is what fraud experts say too. It wasn't told Pat's $2,000 card rule, or that Jordan's "dead" phone was still texting. What it can't do is tell you which message is real: it only sees the words. It can't call anyone back or check an account number. Both Opus runs on the crane text noticed that its phone number was a made-up 555-01 number, the kind movies use. Every number in this game is one.
A real boss would rather wait ten minutes than lose $18,420. If yours wouldn't, that's worth knowing too.
Last checked November 11, 2026. Halloran Heating & Air, Kestrel HVAC Supply, Riverline Crane, the bank and its 3:30 cutoff, and everyone in the story are made up, and so are their phone numbers and web addresses. They aren't real websites. Don't visit them: anyone could buy those names later. How long each check takes, and the amounts the bank freezes in the game, are made up too. Torah Tech wrote this lesson with the help of Claude, an AI made by Anthropic. Any mistakes are ours.
Torah Tech is a beit midrash in Tel Aviv built for personal and professional growth: Torah learning at the center of every day, and internships at Israeli startups. It is the year a future Jewish leader realizes who he can become, and chooses to become it.