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
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
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