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The New York Knicks organization sent employees a phishing email promising free championship rings in a test of its staff’s ability to detect scams, The New York Times reported yesterday. “Congratulations, your Employee Championship Ring is here,” the email sent in late September said, instructing employees to click a link to make a selection from two ring designs. Madison Square Garden employees who clicked that link “were forced to attend a mandatory cybersecurity class to help satisfy some of [owner James] Dolan’s growing cybersecurity concerns,” the report said, citing team sources. Dolan is the owner of the Knicks, the New York Rangers, and Madison Square Garden. It’s common for corporations to send phishing emails to find out which employees don’t pay attention to clues that an email is a scam. A cybersecurity-test email often appears to be from the company itself but includes telltale signs of phishing. For example, Ars Technica owner Condé Nast sends phishing-test messages from email addresses with a misspelled domain, “condenest.com.” It’s not difficult for the typical Ars Technica reporter or editor to spot this kind of tell, but we haven’t received any offer as valuable as a free NBA championship ring. We can hardly blame a Knicks organization staffer for being fooled or at least greatly annoyed by a fake offer of a ring commemorating the basketball franchise’s first NBA championship in more than half a century. We don’t know whether the Knicks email had any obvious signs that it was a phishing test, such as a misspelled domain name. The offer wasn’t implausible, either. “Typically, most employees for NBA teams receive rings, even if they are not as fancy and expensive as the ones the players receive,” wrote Joe Vardon, senior NBA writer for The Athletic, which was bought by The New York Times in 2022 and then merged into the parent news organization. Phishing email and empty ring boxes Vardon’s article was primarily about how Knicks assistant coaches did not get rings on Tuesday when the team raised its first league championship banner since 1973. The assistant coaches were handed boxes without rings inside, though they are expected to receive rings later on.
document fetched 2026-10-24 15:22 · canonical https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/knicks-sent-employees-fake-offer-of-championship-rings-in-phishing-test-report