It all starts with a hacked inbox or an imposter using a similar-looking fake inbox to impersonate someone else. In certain cases we have seen, the fraudster gained access to an attorney’s or law firm’s email account, the client’s email account, or the email accounts of individuals with a stake in the deal via hacking. In these cases, fraudsters may use legitimate email addresses to give instructions for wire transfers while they secretly monitor the traffic. The following tips may help you reduce the possibility of falling victim to more complex scams.
Maintain a High Level of Vigilance: Double-check that you entered the correct email address.
The δικηγορος ηλεκτρονικές απάτες should utilise spam filters and check their clients’ email addresses to protect themselves from cybercriminals posing as lawyers, law firm workers, clients, financial institutions, and other legitimate organisations. For further details and advice on how to recognise and avoid fraudulent email addresses, please refer to our article “Paying attention to the scam behind the curtain.”
Verify that no alterations have been made to the original documents.
If you provide documents to someone by electronic transmission, you must double verify them as soon as you get them back to make sure that no vital information, such as wire direction instructions, has been changed. Whether you submit a document with wire instructions or other sensitive financial information and get it back, you may check to see if it was tampered with.
Put in place a method whereby all wire transfers may be independently verified.
Verify the accuracy of the instructions for transferring trust funds via a different channel than the one they were originally sent over. This preventative measure might lessen the impact of e-mail account hacking attempts and occurrences in which documents are taken and subsequently changed.
Please read this before making any payments to any other businesses: If a lawyer at Firm A sends a lawyer at Firm B wire instructions by email, the lawyer at Firm B (or someone on their staff) may call Firm A to verify the wire instructions. The same protocol is followed regardless of whether the money transfer request comes from a financial institution or another source.
Independent verification techniques created by organisations have been successful in deterring fraud. A simple phone call can verify the legitimacy of wire transfers, protecting you against fraud.
You should build anti-fraud practises into the fabric of your organisation.
It’s important to keep yourself and your staff up-to-date on fraud training. You may reduce your risk of being a fraud victim by putting the following advice into practise.
Never let your guard down
Stopping fraud is not something that can be done overnight. Both you and your team need to be on constant alert.
The authenticity of a request to transfer funds may be enhanced by the use of forged documents.
On many occasions, fraudsters have been caught altering wire transfer instructions by forging documents. Even “secure” electronic documents created by a law firm have been known to be intercepted, altered to provide new account details for transferring funds, and then sent back to the law office. It’s occurred more than once, really.