Fraudulent Emails

Like many other businesses dealing with money, such as banks, law firms are targeted by fraudsters who try to steal money from the firm and its clients.  Part of keeping your money safe involves making you aware of the ways in which you may be targeted. 

Typically, fraudsters will send you an email pretending to be someone from this firm and try to persuade you to send money to a fraudulent account.

If you receive an email with what are said to be new or updated bank details for the firm, even if the email appears to have come from this firm, then you should disregard it and not send any money.  It is likely to have come from someone trying to defraud you.  We will not send you bank details by email.

You may be asked to make a test payment to ‘verify’ that the new bank details are correct.  We will never ask you to make a test payment.

Most, it not all, online banking systems use the Confirmation of Payee (CoP) system.  When you make an online payment and enter the firm’s name and the bank account details the CoP system will confirm that they are correct.  If you enter the bank details that you have received and are warned that they are not correct then please do not transfer any money without calling and speaking to us.  A spam email may make some excuse as to why the details can’t be checked.  Our bank details will be confirmed by the CoP system.

Some other signs that might indicate that an email is fraudulent is if it contains a number of spelling or grammatical errors.  You may also notice that the ‘from’ or ‘reply to’ email addresses are wrong.  Often only a letter may have been changed.  For example, it may have paul@pauldodsd.co.uk rather than paul@pauldodds.co.uk so that at a glance it appears correct.

We’re doing all that we can to protect ourselves and our clients from fraud but please be very careful when sending money to us.  We will have provided you with details of our client bank account in writing when you first instructed us.  Our bank account details will not change during the course of your transaction.  You can verify our bank details with us before sending any money by calling our main office telephone number or by calling into our office in person.  Do not use email to contact us as a compromised email account which a fraudster has access to is a common way in which fraud is attempted.