If you’re one of those folks who thinks it’s only computer-illiterate grandparents that get taken by e-mail scams, you’re mistaken. In fact, even people at the most cultured and snooty of companies can get taken for millions by a craftily worded e-mail.

Condé Nast, publisher of doorstops like Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, W, The New Yorker and other publications that used to matter when people still read magazines, had to get the Secret Service involved to recover nearly $8 million it lost to a scammer who pretended to be Condé’s print vendor.

According to the NY Post, all it took for Condé Nast to be suckered into the scam was a single e-mail sent last November. It appeared to come from the printing company Quad/Graphics and it requested that Condé Nast begin sending its payments to a Texas bank account set up in the name of “Quad Graph.”

After six weeks of not receiving payments, the real Quad called up the Nast-y folks to ask, “Uh, where’s our money?” At which point you know someone was given a rather acerbic tongue-lashing straight out of The Devil Wears Prada.

Most of the money has been recovered, though the man who opened the bank accounts has not yet been charged with any crime.

Condé hit for $8 million in e-mail scam [NY Post]

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