Someone forged my resignation letter [closed]

Question

So about six weeks ago, my mother’s illness took a turn for the worse, and I took some time off work to take care of her. It was all very rushed because we never expected her condition to worsen so quickly and things were just very messy. I was also pretty stressed at the time, so perhaps I didn’t deal with the situation in the best way, and I only communicated with the CEO over the phone about the whole situation and I didn’t know how long I would be away. He was understanding and basically told me to take as much time as I needed.

Anyway, my mother died three weeks later and after the funeral I flew back home. I was still grieving and wanted a bit more time off to work through some emotions. But I wanted to actually come back to work to negotiate in person. To my surprise when I got in (and apparently to everyone else’s surprise as well) my desk had been cleared. I spoke to my CEO and he told / showed me a resignation email I had allegedly sent him. It was actually from my work address. He even showed me his reply email accepting my resignation. It was dated only a few days after I left and he said the paperwork had all been filled out and there was nothing he could do because they already hired someone to replace me.

Now, maybe it could be conceivable to others that, in my grief, I remotely logged in, sent the email and forgot I did it. I know I didn’t send the email (I need a work dongle to log in and I didn’t bring it with me) but I don’t know who would’ve sent it. I can’t imagine my CEO doing something like this. He seemed genuinely surprised that I had come back and he said he had been disappointed to learn that I had decided to move back for good. It could’ve been a colleague because I know there is a backdoor way to send emails using someone else’s account via some sort of a SQL database thing. We used to do it as jokes but it was never used for something like this and I can’t imagine anyone that would hate me enough to go this far.

The fact is, I don’t care that much about the job. It was the fact that I had long service leave in about 6 months (I was actually coming in to negotiate whether I could take the leave early) and quitting meant I wouldn’t be paid out for it.

So I guess in this situation, do I have any choice other than to accept someone quit for me and move on?

Answer 1

You need to talk to a lawyer, ASAP.

It is absolutely unacceptable that a company would accept a forged resignation. It's understandable for them to have believed it initially, but once you came in to say it wasn't you, an investigation should have started. Whether you want to keep this job or not, it is unethical for them to leave you suddenly unemployed because someone else committed fraud.

Regardless of whether you want to keep the job or not, get a lawyer. (IANAL, so the rest of this is speculative.) At the very least the company owes you severance pay for firing you. It's unlikely you'll get your job back (unless they give you the job of the person who forged your letter), but you have a good chance of getting damages. My guess is the most difficult part would be proving it wasn't you who resigned, as the company would likely accuse you of regretting your resignation and lying about it.

The specifics of what you can hope to achieve are going to be greatly dependent on your local laws, but that's a question for your lawyer, not us.

Answer 2

I would recommend going to one of the Assistant District Attorneys in your area as a first step. Forgery is a felony in the United States, a serious crime. Your first move should be to find out if the DA would be willing to prosecute a case like this. If they want to prosecute, they will ask you to sign an affidavit swearing to the facts of the case. You may want to bring such an affidavit with you when you go to the DA's office.

If the DA's office says they might be willing to prosecute, then they will tell the police to investigate it further and collect evidence. If a crime is discovered, then you will have the company "by the balls" so to speak, since they fired you fraudulently. Even if the CEO claims he had no idea, it does not matter because it is negligence to fire somebody based on a lone email with no signature or other assurance. If the police investigation reveals that the forgery was part of a conspiracy to fire you, then you will have a huge legal claim against the company (think in hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Either way, step number one: talk to the DA's office and come prepared with a full written statement of the situation.

(PS Comment on lawyers: while talking to a lawyer is certainly possible, in this case you will get better, faster results by going to the DA first. You can always hire a lawyer later. A lawyer might be tempted to steer you down a path that is not in your best interest, but makes more money for them. With a criminal situation such as this, get it going with the DA first, and think about lawyers later after the criminal case is established.)

Answer 3

I would try to get a lawyer versed in IT subjects/cybercrime.

What the OP and the other answers seem to ignore is that is rather trivial to spoof email messages; the email protocol was never designed with security in mind. (any IT person worth his salt can easily land in your email box an email "from" Bill Gates "himself" from pretty much anywhere in the world - this is kid´s stuff for any rookie system administrator)

That said, if an investigation is made, getting the full and original email will be essential to find out where that message came from; e.g. a forward copy is not enough.

Looking at the full headers, and or the logs of the email server, or rather saying in a more formal way, a cursory forensic investigation will most probably prove easily the message did not come from the location where you were hosted.

Do not ask beforehand for this data. Do not alert anyone of this path; let the competent authorities demand this data from them. Otherwise, the culprit might try to cover his tracks.

Answer 4

Hire a lawyer, obviously

It's amusing that so many are saying that the CEO should do something about it. Seriously? Who do you think authorized it?

In most email systems, you can't forge an email without the help of IT. Manager can't do it, coworker can't do it and the CEO can't do it. Do you really think think an IT guy is going to help anyone but the CEO forge an email? "Charlie, Kumal just quit and I need to get into his account. Change his password for me." and it's done.

But yes, you need to see a lawyer, pronto. Don't go see your district attorney as a first step though. That would be self-injurious because a prosecutor isn't interested in you, he's interested in getting a conviction and really couldn't care less whether you get what you deserve.

An attorney that works for you is who you want to talk to first of all. If it's advantageous for you to call the authorities, he'll do that. And that may be the case actually, but you need someone looking out for your interests first and your attorney is the one to do that. Your attorney could actually possibly use the threat of a criminal complaint as leverage.

Having said all that, you've got a really tough case which I know you're aware. Having nothing written down hurts you. On the other hand, any judge or jury would have to find it hard to believe that a person would suddenly quit without even asking for your final paycheck.

Answer 5

To answer your question bluntly: no; you do not have accept this, and you shouldn't.

As many others noted:

1) Hire a Lawyer

2) Report the fraud to a law enforcement agency

But since no-one has suggested it, yet:

3) Contact an IT Professional specializing in Digital Forensics.

If you still have access to your email, back it up to a file and submit it to your lawyer and IT professional as evidence. If you do not have access to the alleged email, your lawyer may subpoena it. Either way, once you have that email deliver it to an IT Forensics professional. They can use the email header to reverse engineer the IP address of the person who emailed it. Also consider subpoenaing the mail-server's log.

Cross reference the time and location with your own records and you can prove fraud.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer but I am an IT professional (though not forensics).

Answer 6

I'm terrified that one can quit without a handwritten signature on real paper (or official e-signature of some kind). As other answers state, you need to contact a lawyer.

It is highly likely that your resignation is not legally sound. Your employer should be easy to convince to pay you the leave and avoid expensive lawsuits. Just don't sign anything without your lawyer!

Whether you want to go after the one sending your resignation letter, that's your own decision - is it worth it? Maybe it is. You decide if you want to put energy into it. But if your CEO is serious, they will most definitely want to get rid of such a person and will try to find who that was.

Answer 7

I would discuss with your superior what has happened and make clear that you did not send this mail. It is not ok (from a security and personal point) that this can happen. First discuss it with him before making accusations or start searching for the culprit.

Secondly I would decide what you would like to do. Do you want to return to the job, or use this as an opportunity to change? This is completely up to you.

Answer 8

If you are in the USA, call the local law enforcement agency that handles Fraud and Forgeries. They will probably tell you it is a Civil matter, however, in which case you need a lawyer as others have suggested.

Depending upon where you are located, it could be First or Second Degree Forgery, typically a Felony.

And yes, I'd call the local law enforcement folks first, Sheriff's Office/Department or Police Department, County or Municipality or both. They will direct you to the Investigators and/or Detectives (at least in the USA.)

At the same time, I'd call a lawyer and tell them I had called and opened a criminal case.

When law enforcement starts calling the employer, you might find out real quick if it is made up or not, unless someone wants to go to jail.

But, just how much emotional capital are you willing to spend? It could be a nightmare. Crimes usually are.

Be sure you are right on this before you start. It could turn into a much bigger mess than it already is. Think about what you will tell new employers in the Interview (Oh, my last job, well I put a guy in jail and sued the company.)

Answer 9

There's quite a bit of good advice suggesting you should check with a lawyer. Whether you were wronged in a legally liable way will vary based on laws in your area. Such laws may vary based on your employer, like how big of a company it is. For "at will" employment, the company may not have been required to keep your job open at all.

You may want to see if you can negotiate being paid for the long service leave, as the company might prefer to pay you what the company was probably intending to pay you soon anyway (instead of risk a court case that might lead to greater damages). You may want to assess how likely you think you'd win in court, what your favorable judgement would likely be, and how much you would care about the idea that you may be burning bridges (being unlikely to ever be re-hired after launching such a suit... although, how likely is a near-term opening for such a position anyway?)

If you do decide to take the friendly approach of trying to communicate directly with a friendly CEO (instead of starting out by lawyering up), make sure any "settlement" includes you getting a copy of the relevant log information (especially what IP addresses were involved, and any details on who those IP addresses may have been assigned to). Get that data preserved ASAP. If you don't ask for this right away, the company may not be inclined to help you (an ex-employee) have data you could use to sue the jerk who did this (a current employee), even if their internal investigation identified who did this atrocity.

Regardless of your immediate thoughts about when to get a lawyer involved, definitely document details immediately. Who did what, who said/typed what, and when? Such details can fade over time, perhaps especially as more details are added, and so having written records (even self-created ones) can be extremely valuable.

Also, before taking any aggressive/hurtful actions against the company or the person who wrote that E-Mail, consider how much you want to try to personally profit, how much you want to inflict justice, and how much you want to mercifully forgive. A lot of people just default to trying to get whatever seems easily apparent that they might be able to get, such as money and trying to get whatever emotional satisfaction revenge seems like it might offer. However, pursuing such acquisitions can have some costs (including emotional toll) and such pursuit isn't always the best route. Intentionally make your decision. (Coming to a decision of your own will is at least likely to help you to feel less like a complex situation gained power over you, leaving you unable to, at minimum, even make your own decisions.)