Wire Fraud Prevention Tip

1
Wire Fraud Prevention Tip
Scammers are increasingly targeting lawyers by
sending forged emails to law firms, their clients
and/or to financial institutions, instructing
that funds be wired to accounts controlled by the
scammers. The scam typically involves a
compromised email account (which can be the
lawyers, the clients or even the banks) which
scammers are monitoring to uncover pending
transactions requiring an outlay of funds - such
as a real estate purchase, a loan, or the
settlement of a lawsuit.
2
At the appropriate time, when the parties are
expecting a request for funds, the hackers will
send wire instructions to the party holding the
funds requiring that the funds be sent to the
hackers account. The funds are immediately swept
from the account, and the hackers disappear. The
emails usually originate from an address that
appears to be from a legitimate sender, but uses
a similar, but slightly altered domain name.
Sometimes the scammer will request a change to
previous wire transfer instructions after a
request has already been made, or suddenly
require that funds be transferred by wire when
the original agreement was to pay by check. To
help prevent clients from falling victim to one
of these scams, lawyers should educate clients
about wire fraud scams and consider using
warnings in their email signature lines such as
WARNING - FRAUD ALERT Hackers are targeting the
e-mail of parties involved with real estate
transactions, business transactions and
settlements in attempts to distribute fraudulent
wire instructions. If you receive an e-mail
appearing to be from our office requesting that
you wire, or transfer funds, confirm all wiring
instructions by phone directly with our office
before transferring funds. Be certain you are
speaking with someone from our office when
confirming wire instructions. VERIFY OUR
TELEPHONE NUMBER FROM A SOURCE OTHER THAN THE
PHONE NUMBER ACCOMPANYING THE E-MAILED WIRE
INSTRUCTIONS. For more AttPro Alerts and
additional risk management resources, please
visit Attorney Protective Risk Management
3
Attorneys First Insurance 36310 US 19 N. Palm
Harbor, Florida 34684 727-799-4321 727-559-2999 Sa
m_at_attorneysfirst.com Debbie_at_attorneysfirst.com h
ttps//attorneysfirst.com/