Why are So Many Law Firms Victims of Scams?

They say it’s impossible to cheat an honest person. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it is, the fact that so many law firms, large and small, are getting cheated probably means that lawyer jokes aren’t going away any time soon.

Anyway, the FBI has had to issue a warning to law firms about the most common scams targeting them, and how to avoid them. Many of them involve phony overseas clients who claim that they’re trying to collect a debt from a debtor in the U.S. Others involve emails containing fake subpoenas, which harbor computer viruses. Usually, these viruses aren’t the destructive mischief-makers that we were hearing so much about 5-10 years ago. Rather, they run silently in the background, so the computer user doesn’t even know it’s there. Until it’s removed, it collects all of the data it can off of the user’s computer, and transmits it over the Internet to the person who made the virus. This can allow them to potentially access confidential client information, or even bank accounts.

We’ve been hearing about these scams since at least 2008. But now we’re hearing about a new one (see also), involving a person who contacts a law firm, claiming to have found an important-looking package addressed to them on a bus or subway. They offer to deliver the package to the firm’s office, for the price of a round-trip cab fare. They show up with a box of official-looking documents, and a cab receipt. They ask to be compensated for double the cab fare (to cover the trip there, and the trip back to where they came from – seems perfectly plausible). They leave, and the firm eventually finds out that the documents are fake, and have nothing to do with any case they’re working on.

Now, as far as law firm scams go, this one doesn’t cost them very much money – it just costs the price of a round-trip cab fare. We’re talking about maybe $60, here. This particular scam isn’t too bad – no confidential information is disclosed, and the firm is bilked out of a relatively small amount of money. It’s still wrong, of course, and subject to severe criminal and civil penalties - if the scammer is caught.

This might lead you to wonder why someone would go to so much effort and risk for what is essentially pocket change. Obviously, someone pulling this scam is either very desperate, or simply gets a rush out of defrauding people.

Other scams targeting lawyers, however, have been much more damaging, using fake settlement offers to bilk them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why are lawyers so vulnerable to scammers? Well, according to interviews given by many reformed con artists, they claim that smart people are usually the most attractive marks. This is because smart people tend to have money. But, more importantly, smart people generally know that they’re smart, and assume that they are far too intelligent to ever fall for a scam. This makes them very easy targets.

Lawyers are probably, on average, at least a little bit more intelligent than the general population. If nothing else, they are more book-smart than the average person, but book-smarts don’t necessarily equate to real world street smarts.

Of course, there are some lawyers who aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer. Anyone who works in the legal field has met lawyers who are intelligent to the point of being intimidating, and has probably also met a few lawyers who make you wonder how they passed the bar. There’s one thing almost all lawyers, regardless of their intelligence, have in common: they think they’re extremely smart. It’s no wonder that a person who thinks he’s way smarter than he is would make a good target for a scammer.

Most scams also appeal to some of the basest human emotions, such as greed or lust. Once you’ve struck a chord with a person’s baser nature, they’re much easier to manipulate, as they’ve let down many of their defenses.

For this reason, many scams promise the victim something for nothing: “you’ll get thousands of dollars tomorrow if you just loan me a hundred dollars today” – “The woman of your dreams saw your Facebook profile, and is madly in love with you, but she’s in Russia and needs you to pay her airfare” – and so on.

Now, it makes sense that scammers will try to appeal to our baser natures to get what they want. But I also found out, in reading about conmen when I first read about this trend, that the old adage “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” while accurate, isn’t very helpful in avoiding scams. Most scams won’t seem too good to be true. An effective scam will sound like a really good deal, but the proposal will seem plausible.

Some of the scams that target attorneys, rather than seeming too good to be true, might seem too mundane to be false. After all, would you expect someone to forge a bunch of legal documents, and go to all that trouble just to scam a big law firm out of the price of a cab fare? Or would you expect an emailed subpoena, which big law firms probably receive in the dozens, to contain a data-mining program?

Obviously, most people wouldn’t even think of that possibility, especially if they’re extremely busy, as many lawyers are.

So, what can lawyers do to avoid being scammed? Well, nothing is foolproof, and “minor” scams like the cab fare con may be unavoidable.

However, when receiving solicitations from prospective clients, especially if they’re overseas, lawyers (who, if nothing else, are good at doing research) should vet them as much as possible. Another piece of advice that applies to everyone is this: if you get some kind of offer that seems just a little too good, or raises any other red flags, ask yourself 2 simple questions: is it possible that this person is lying? If they are lying, what do I stand to lose, and what do they stand to gain?

Obviously, the answers to those questions will be different based on every situation, but if the answers are, respectively, “yes” and “lots,” you should probably avoid any quick decisions.

By: Rusty Shackleford