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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