We regularly get scam emails here in the office.

A personal favourite is the one that began with “hello, my victim” followed by the misspelling of ‘orgasm’ and a request for $700 in Bitcoin.

Every scam email we get has a few things in common. They’re poorly worded, contain empty threats or wild promises, and terrible grammar.

There’s a new scam doing the rounds, however, that’s conning even the most sophisticated businesses out of big money. This is particularly prominent in the property market.

TimesLIVE spoke with Keri Murphy, who was in the process of buying a property in the Western Cape.

When the conveyancing attorney phoned her to discuss the transfer papers she would be sending, she had no idea that a fraudster had already been in contact with her via e-mail, pretending to be her.

“He had altered my e-mail address, but only slightly so she would not notice.”

“I then received an e-mail from the fraudster posing as the conveyancer,” she said. “Her company header and e-mail address had also been slightly altered, but as this was the first e-mail I’d received from ‘the law firm’, I had no way of knowing that the e-mail was not actually from them.”

The fraudster then inserted their own banking details in that email. Murphy, who did not suspect a scam, proceeded to transfer almost R111 000 into their bank account.

10 days later she received a call from the conveyancer, saying that they had not received any payment from Murphy.

In the case of sellers, the fraudster poses as the seller and issues a last-minute e-mail instruction to the attorney to pay the proceeds of the sale into a new bank account.

Loads of companies are being similarly hacked – so double check all e-mailed invoice details – but if there is one group of people that should be wise to the e-mail hacking scam, it’s conveyancing attorneys.

Given the large amounts of money going into and out of their trust accounts, they’re an obvious target for cyber-criminals.

This particular type of cybercrime isn’t new. In 2016, the Cape Law Society issued a circular to its members, warning them about attempts to defraud firms of attorneys, specifically by means of hacking staff and clients’ e-mails.

The fraud became so rife that in July 2016, the Attorneys Insurance Indemnity Fund – a non-profit company now called the Legal Practitioners Indemnity Insurance Fund [LPIIF], which provides indemnity insurance to all practicing attorneys in SA – excluded cyber crime from their cover.

A year later, the fund’s general manager, Thomas Harban, reported that since that exclusion, the fund had been notified of more than 50 cyber crime-related claims with a total value of more than R25m.

So how do you protect yourself? Verify, verify, verify.

When engaging the services of a conveyancing attorney, discuss the fake e-mail cyber crime scenario. Ask if the firm has insurance to cover it, and make sure that it’s separate from LPIIF cover.

If you’re selling, phone the law firm to confirm details or, even better, go to the law firm and personally obtain them.

Basically, always exercise caution.

[source:timeslive]