{"id":760,"date":"2019-08-05T16:45:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T14:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/?p=760"},"modified":"2021-07-28T13:15:33","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T11:15:33","slug":"beware-of-property-cyber-scammers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/beware-of-property-cyber-scammers\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware of Property Cyber Scammers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cForewarned is Forearmed!\u201d (Wise old saying)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Why yet another warning about cyber-scams in the property industry? It\u2019s because the hard fact is that the criminals are winning this war. In fact we are now reportedly the \u201csecond most targeted country in the world with regard to cyber-attacks\u201d (Law Society of South Africa)<\/p>\n<p>Hence, no doubt, the Legal Practitioners Indemnity Insurance Fund report of \u201c<strong>over 110 cybercrime related claims with a total value of R70m<\/strong>\u201d in the period July 2016 to August 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The scammers are using more and more sophisticated techniques to lull their victims into complacency, and your best protection is your own vigilance \u2013 forewarned is definitely forearmed!<\/p>\n<p>And remember that property transactions will always remain a firm favourite with online fraudsters for two simple reasons \u2013<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Property sales usually involve large amounts of money.<\/li>\n<li>Electronic communication between attorneys and clients is a fertile ground for interception and deception.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>How your money gets taken \u2013 2 main scenarios<\/h2>\n<p>Cyber criminals are resourceful, creative and constantly updating their methods so this is by no means an exhaustive list of your risk areas. To date however the two main categories of scam remain \u2013<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Your attorney\u2019s payment to you:<\/strong> As a seller, when you give the transfer instruction to your attorney you will nominate a bank account \u2013 account A in this example \u2013 to receive the sale proceeds. Before transfer however (often at the very last minute) the conveyancing firm receives a genuine-looking email \u201cfrom you\u201d changing your banking details to \u201cmy new account, account B\u201d. Your emails to and from your attorney have been intercepted, and your details cleverly spoofed. Your money is gone \u2013 forever. <strong>Of course if you choose the right attorney to attend to your transfer in the first place this shouldn\u2019t happen to you \u2013 but, as we shall see below, the scammers are so sophisticated now that you can never ever let your guard down, no matter how trustworthy the firm.<\/strong>\n<p><\/li>\n<li><strong>Your payments to the attorney:<\/strong> The main risk here is to the buyer paying the whole or a large portion of the purchase price to the transferring attorney. Of course transfer duty and other costs of transfer can also add up to a tidy sum, whilst as a seller you will be paying for things like the bond cancellation costs, rates, agent\u2019s commission and so on.\n<p>The scam here is that once again emails are intercepted, and this time you receive an authentic-looking but entirely fraudulent email asking you to pay into \u201caccount C\u201d. The email appears to come from the conveyancing firm but of course it is again a clever (often very sophisticated) impersonation, this time of the firm\u2019s branding, details and email address.<\/p>\n<p>The false account details might be in the email itself or in a falsified attachment \u2013 nothing is safe. The email may be in the form of a \u201cwe\u2019ve changed our banking details\u201d notification, or the criminal may work on the basis that you just won\u2019t notice the change. And of course account C isn\u2019t the conveyancer\u2019s trust account at all, and the minute you make a payment into it your money is once again \u2013 gone forever.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Who can you recover your loss from?<\/h2>\n<p>By the time you realise you have been duped, the criminals are long gone and your chances of catching up to them are remote to say the least.<\/p>\n<p>So could the attorney possibly be liable? A recent High Court judgement deals with that very issue\u2026<\/p>\n<h3>Court: attorney negligent, must pay<\/h3>\n<p>In this case a transferring attorney was ordered to pay her client damages of almost R1m for negligence.<\/p>\n<p>In a nutshell, the attorney had attended to a property transfer for the sellers, and a scammer intercepted emails between the sellers and the attorneys secretary. This was a classic \u201cScenario 1\u201d operation, and seemingly a sophisticated one \u2013 the scammers persuaded the secretary to accept an emailed \u201cmy bank account details have changed\u201d instruction and to pay the proceeds into the scammer\u2019s account.<\/p>\n<p>The sellers sued the attorney for damages, the attorney denied any negligence whatsoever, but the Court found that she had indeed failed to carry out her mandate with the \u201cdue car, skill and diligence expected of a reasonable attorney and a conveyancer in the circumstances\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>What is important for you is that the Court reached this conclusion <strong>on the particular facts of this matter<\/strong>. There were specific factors present here such that a \u201cdiligent, reasonable attorney\u201d would, said the Court, have taken steps to verify the information in the fraudulent emails.<\/p>\n<p>That suggests that there are many possible sets of facts which would have left the seller unable to prove any failure of duty by the attorney. <strong>Your risk is that if you try to hold the attorney liable you will have to prove that your loss resulted from his\/her fault and not from yours \u2013 that\u2019s never going to be easy and if you fail, you are left high and dry.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3>Protect yourself. Be vigilant!<\/h3>\n<p>So prevention is really much better than cure here. Litigation will be expensive and risky, and even if you succeed in your damages claim the attorney\u2019s normal indemnity insurance excludes these types of claims so your victory could be a hollow one.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately there are several common sense steps you can take to minimize your risk \u2013<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you have the choice of transferring attorney (which you normally would have if you are the seller), choose an attorney you trust to do the job properly, carefully and professionally.<\/li>\n<li>Having said that, no matter how much security your attorney have put in place on their side, if it if your system that is vulnerable that is what the criminals will exploit. So keep all your anti-virus, anti-malware and other security software updated, learn all about protecting yourself from malware\/spyware\/phishing attacks, and generally treat all electronic communications with caution \u2013 even those appearing to come from a trusted source like your attorney.<\/li>\n<li>Read \u201cIs That Sender For Real? Three Ways to Verify the Identity of An Email\u201d on FRSecure\u2019s blog. All the tips given there are important, but at the very least use the methods given to find out where the email really comes from. Then check back to see that it matches in every detail the email address you were given at the start of the transfer process.<\/li>\n<li>Be suspicious if anything in an email just feels \u201cnot-quite-right\u201d \u2013 perhaps only a cell phone number is given, or a free generic email address (like Gmail) is used, or the wording is somehow \u201coff\u201d. If the email makes you even the slightest bit uneasy, err on the side of caution and investigate further.<\/li>\n<li>Most importantly, never accept notification of any supposed change in your attorney\u2019s banking details without visiting or phoning your attorney to check all is in order (don\u2019t of course use the contact details given in the suspicious email, they could also have been doctored!).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[This article was originally published in the LawDotNews August 2019 newsletter. To view the full August 2019 newsletter please go to this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dotnews.co.za\/Code\/online.aspx?qry=ZSpQuU5At1JrluIQsNfWTc2Jhw3dco00qmDitmB91ySoUUtS\/DEk7f9Q\/gb4+9ufnf4uE7HJGxHE7CE0lCfQVOURBzc3+0sHd79V5G0xj6Y9VUzXpnTmJ5h5BGWJtyuiDaJoTS07xGxCs7DrGpGMBTzWcWfIpZ8IwErc6PF4u9XBf\/CRf0gEcf1L19YH3zff1bz4qpEWZG+n1Wcws8DG25QIwe0w+0mcKCCAU00MW967EpTZDr\/c0a643QvITtEz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">link<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cForewarned is Forearmed!\u201d (Wise old saying) Why yet another warning about cyber-scams in the property industry? It\u2019s because the hard fact is that the criminals are winning this war. In fact we are now reportedly the \u201csecond most targeted country in the world with regard to cyber-attacks\u201d (Law Society of South Africa) Hence, no doubt, &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/beware-of-property-cyber-scammers\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Beware of Property Cyber Scammers<\/span> Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72,71,49,65,70],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsenslin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}