A Milwaukee Bucks employee was tricked by an e-mail scam and handed over financial data of players and other employees to a hacker, the NBA club admitted Thursday.

In a statement, the Bucks revealed that they learned Monday that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax forms were provided to an unknown person who faked being team president Peter Feigin.

"On May 16, 2016, we discovered our company was the victim of an e-mail spoofing attack that occurred when a request was recently made by an unknown impersonator of our president for 2015 employee W-2s," the Bucks statement said.

"Unfortunately, that information was provided by an employee before it was determined that the request was made from a spoofed e-mail address."

Reports said the scam was successful on April 26, meaning almost three weeks lapsed before the breach of security was uncovered.

The Bucks told the IRS and FBI about the breach and vowed to work with authorities on their investigations.

But the financial details for such Bucks players as Greek forward Giannis Antetokounmpo and Venezuelan forward Greivis Vazquez as well as employees in other areas of the club were revealed, including names, addresses, US Social Security numbers, birth dates and total compensation packages.

"We take this incident, and the privacy and security of our employees, very seriously," the Bucks said. "We immediately launched an investigation, which is aggressive and ongoing.

"We quickly notified impacted individuals and are arranging for these individuals to have access to three years of credit monitoring and non-expiring identity restoration services.

"We believe this incident arose as a result of human error and are providing additional privacy training to our staff and implementing additional preventative measures."

Source :AFP