Colorado Supreme Court
Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel
Promoting Professionalism. Protecting the Public.
Scams Targeting Lawyers
Get Sophisticated
Better grammar, specific details and
names of real businesses have helped fraudsters con some Colorado attorneys.
By JAMES CARLSON
Fall
2013
Earlier this
year, a small Denver firm received an email requesting help in a commercial
debt dispute. The email was supposedly from an executive at a United
Kingdom-based home improvement store that was attempting to recover more than
$1 million from a Lowe’s located in Lakewood. The executive said he had made a
50-percent down payment on goods that were never delivered. Now he wanted legal
assistance.
The email turned
out to be one of a growing number of bad check scams targeting lawyers across
the country this year. The Denver firm didn’t bite. But other Colorado attorneys
haven’t been so lucky with similar schemes.
That might be
because scam artists have honed their tactics in recent years. Their emails use
better grammar, list phone numbers that are staffed by live people and utilize
the names of real people at real businesses. And they often include supporting
documentation that bolster the air of authenticity.
These are the
new Nigerian scams, and they’re aimed directly at attorneys. Protecting
yourself, however, requires the same old tactics as with any client soliciting
your services — due diligence, and a lot of it.
These bad-check
scammers are now targeting real-estate, business, litigation and family law
practitioners. The language might differ across fields, but the process plays
out the same. A person in a foreign country presents a legal matter requiring a
lawyer’s assistance. The person then sends a fake cashier’s check for the
attorney to deposit in a trust account. Almost immediately following the
deposit, the supposed client emails again stating that he or she has resolved
the issue with the opposing party. He or she then asks for the deposited funds
to be wire transferred back to another account. As an incentive, the supposed
client offers for the attorney to retain a generous portion for services rendered.
It all goes down
before the attorney or the bank realize the check was actually fraudulent. In
the wake, attorneys are often left with overdrawn trust accounts.
The scammers
might sound easy enough to detect, but they have refined their approach recently.
They often include details that add to the supposed legitimacy. Because of
that, many Colorado attorneys have fallen victim in recent years.
The emailer from
the UK referenced above, for instance, was purportedly an executive with
J&A Mcdougalls, which is a real home improvement company in the UK. (The real
store doesn’t have an “s” at the end of its name.) It listed a Lowe’s store and
address that actually exists in Lakewood. And the emailer went so far as to
include a fake email exchange between the executive and the Lowe’s store and a
fraudulent contract, on which the UK company was supposedly trying to recover.
In another
example in August, a Denver attorney received an email supposedly from a
UK-based physician looking to buy a home in the United States. The email asked
for legal help with title work on that purchase. Again, the emailer donned the
identity of a real doctor in the UK and said he was referred by a Denver
realtor who actually exists.
The key to
protecting yourself is due diligence. Look up the company or person purportedly
sending the email. Call any number you can find and ask questions. And the
cliché remains true: If it’s too good to be true … well, you know.
For more
information on the types of scams and red flags to watch for, the website
LawPro has developed a useful fact sheet.
James
Carlson is the Information Resources Coordinator for the Office of Attorney
Regulation Counsel. If you have an idea for or a comment about the OARC Update,
contact him at j.carlson@csc.state.co.us.