Scammers are nothing new, particularly in the digital age. As technology becomes more advanced, the ways scammers try to target different people also continues to evolve.

Some other scams you might have encountered or heard of include scammers pretending to be NZ Post employees, NZTA employees, Police, immigration enforcement, bank employees, and more. Often a scammer is trying to make their target pay a phony invoice, fee, fine, or similar, so that the scammer can profit themselves. On other occasions, the scammer may be trying to obtain personal or financial information from the target so they can go on and attempt to defraud them.

Law firms are an attractive target to scammers because most law firms operate trust accounts, sending and receiving funds on behalf of clients. Unfortunately, we have recently seen an increase in attempted scams on our clients when they try to pay money to our trust account.

A recent example involved a client receiving an email which appeared to come from a Wakefield’s employee. The email stated that our bank was doing an audit on our trust account, and that there was a different trust account for the client to send funds to. The client was expecting an email from Wakefield’s to confirm our trust account details – which was intercepted by the scammer, allowing them to insert themselves in the email communications.

The scammers email address appeared credible, (i.e. johnsmith@wakefieldslaw.com) but when the client “replied” to the email, the email address changed to the actual, fake email address, which did not end in @wakefieldslaw.com.

Thankfully, in this case our client did not initially “reply” to the email but hit “forward” to confirm the instructions with the Wakefield’s employee they had been dealing with. The Wakefield’s employee therefore saw the email chain and knowing that we hadn’t changed our trust account details, knew that this was most likely a scam. We could then investigate further to see what exactly had happened.

This could very easily have been missed, however, and our client could have been out of pocket for thousands of dollars. Once funds are paid to a scammer’s bank account, it can be very difficult to get any of that money back!

In order to minimize as much as is possible the risk of us or our clients being scammed, there are a few things we do.

• Bank account proof: When we have funds to pay out to a client from our trust account, such as the sale proceeds from a property, we will ensure we have a screenshot or bank account statement which shows the name and account number of our client.
• Proceeds disbursement form: Wherever possible, when we know we will need to pay out money to a client, we will ask them to sign a form confirming their bank account details to receive those funds. This is usually at an in-person meeting, so the client is right in front of us, giving us their own bank account.
• Phone verification: If we haven’t been able to fill out a proceeds disbursement form for whatever reason, before paying out money to a client, we will call the client and verify on the phone their bank account number.
• Trust account details: If we know a client needs to pay funds to our trust account, when possible, we will give them a printout of our trust account details in person, so there is no question as to if an email with those details came from someone else.

If you need to pay money to our trust account, the best way to verify our account is to call us:

• Call our main line to confirm our trust account details before making any payment.
• If you receive an email that looks like it’s from someone at Wakefield’s, talking about bank account details or asking for money, you can call the mainline or the Wakefield’s employee you are dealing with directly to confirm it is a legitimate communication.

Don’t fall victim to a scammer – a little bit of due diligence can go a long way!

• Brooke McGowan (Solicitor)

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