Legal firms preyed on by “Vishing” con
I attended Crowe Clark Whitehall’s (www.crowehorwath.net) Cheltenham COFA breakfast yesterday hosted by Mark Hunt, Head of Professional Practices – Cheltenham with guest speaker Julie McArdle from the RBS Customer Security Team. There were several COFA’s from local law firms in attendance and I think all of us left the breakfast meeting with one shared thought:
“We must share this with our accounts team now – this is really serious!”
Bank Scam Warning – Simple Steps to Protect your Money
Unfortunately hardly a week seems to pass by without some news report of people having fallen victim to bank scammers. It seems hardly credible that despite the publicity around these scams over recent years and the simple steps needed to safeguard the funds in your bank account that these scams are still prevalent and finding some success for the criminals operating them. Yet it seems no-one is immune to this type of fraud and theft as the Solicitors Regulatory Authority has recently issued a warning to the law firms it regulates to be wary of scammers tricking firms into disclosing bank security information over the telephone.
The warning cites four firms that have been targeted this way recently, and which have collectively had £2 million taken from their accounts. The scammers gain the confidence of those they call – known as social engineering – to obtain important information and access account funds. Specifically, they ask for “challenge and response” codes, which are used to authenticate payments and in some cases digital banking log on and password credentials. The SRA Executive Director of Operations, said: “These scammers are very active and convincing. They are highly sophisticated in their approach and therefore very capable of duping many people.”
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News from ILFM AGM 2014
At yesterday’s Annual General Meeting of the Institute of Legal Finance and Management (ILFM), I was re-elected for a further three years to the ILFM’s Executive Council.
Update to SRA Handbook effective 31st October 2014:
The main legal finance and practice management changes in this latest update are:
- AR20.2 changes have been made following recent the consultation to increase the limit of residual client balances that firms are permitted to dispose of to a charity without the permission of the SRA has been increased from £50 to £500.
- Changes have been made to the AR32 to exempt those firm’s whose where all of the client money received during an accounting period is money held or received from the Legal Aid Agency or in the circumstances set out in rule 19.3 from the requirement to obtain an accountant’s report.
- In addition retaining the existing requirement on all other firms to obtain an accountant’s report if they hold client money but only requiring qualified reports to be delivered to the SRA.
- Changes to the guidance notes to rule 44 and Appendix 5 update the format of the accountant’s report to remove unnecessary information fields.
- A consequential amendment has been made to rule 4.2 to reflect the revised definition of regulated activity for MDPs.
- Changes have been made elsewhere to replace references to the Charities Act 1993 with references to the Charities Act 2011.
- Regulation 6 of the SRA Keeping of the Roll Regulations 2011 has been amended to provide that an enquiry of solicitors without practising certificates will be made at such times as the SRA considers appropriate instead of annually.
