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When my sister called me not too long ago, she was trying to rent an apartment to a purported English national (let’s call him Chip) through an online service. Being the good chap that he was, Chip wanted to pay for a year’s worth of rent as he was working temporarily for an international organization in Washington, D.C. He intended also to send additional funds so that he could “decorate” the abode. For most folks, the idea of cash in hand sounds like a great deal. That is, of course, unless faced with the ultimate e-mail scam.

What would have happened was that Chip would have sent a big fat check to my sister, who would have deposited the funds in her bank account. At the same time, Chip would have asked her to send her own check for the “overage” to the decorator. The purported decorator would then have received actual funds from my sister while the check sent by Chip would have bounced, requiring my sister to make up the difference.

Lest you chuckle, lawyers are getting hammered by the same tactic as banks do not treat certified checks as, well, certified. Recently, (and almost daily), “representatives” in both companies in the USA and abroad pretend that they are seeking legal counsel to collect debts. Ever urgent, they are upfront with their clear willingness to sign an engagement agreement. It is always after a diligent search for counsel that you have been selected and they are in immediate need of counsel. I mean immediate. Some of the scams go so far as to use telephone numbers from the same area code as the purportedly affected business and use legitimate business names and information. I spoke with one poor owner in Arizona (who was supposedly seeking to collect a debt) who has been harassed repeatedly by calls related to the scam.

Bottom line: if it is too good to be true, it is.

Tags: ethics, rules of professional conduct; lawyer advertising; legal ethics; lawyer solicitation, scam

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 8:06 pm and is filed under law business, legal profession, online scam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.