SCAMS ON LAWYERS: UPDATE

Keep the conversation going.

Lawyers, like the general public and every other profession in the United States, are victims of SCAMS too.

I first reported on the 2011 $31 million scam of over 80 law firms in the U.S. and Canada by Nigerian national Emmanuel Ekhator in my book, Legal Consumer Tips and Secrets (Avoiding Debtors' Prison in the United States), page 120, Chapter 11, iUniverse Publishers (2011).

Since August 2011, things have gotten worse. Increasingly, law firms are becoming top prey for predatory email scammers who are successfully exploiting lawyers' eagerness to take on new clients through the Internet.

For example, creating elaborate stories that often involve real companies or properties, scammers say they live abroad and need help collecting money from a debtor or a legal settlement. They ask the lawyers to wire the funds to bank accounts overseas, after taking a cut in fees for their services.

The settlement checks mailed to lawyers' offices and accompanying documents, such as insurance paperwork, appear to be authentic. Phone numbers and other contact information on the documents lead back to scammers who pose as employees and vouch for their legitimacy, authorities say.

Even after doing due diligence, some lawyers fail to discover the scam. They deposit the check into the firm's trust account—a special account for client funds—subtract their fee, and then wire the balance to an overseas bank account, before the law firm's bank realizes the check is a fake or can stop the wire transfer.

It is estimated by U.S. Postal Inspector Louis Di Rienzo, supervisor of a U.S. Postal Service cross-border mail-fraud team, that U.S. and Canadian law firms have been scammed out of at least $70 million this way since 2009.

[see, Legal Consumer Tips and Secrets, by Charles Jerome Ware, Chapter 11, iUniverse Publishers, 2011; online.wsj.com/article/"InEmail,ScammersTakeAimtAtLawyers"]