Free money. Really.
I feel terrible for all of these people in far away countries that are having such a hard time transferring their large sums of money into the United States. There seems to have been quite an explosion of rich divorcees, diamond-fortune heirs, and wealthy princes from war-torn third world nations that have had to resort to email spam to find an attorney lately.
I don't even know when the spam started, a year ago? Two? Anyway, now I get an average of 4-5 a day. I don't recall when it began, but I am sure that I never lost a moment wondering if an email written in badly broken English from an overseas address asking me to participate in a half million - million dollar transaction was legitimate. Now I'm also getting emails purporting to be from the FBI, telling me to contact them to receive my million dollar fortune. Really?
The ABA Journal has had a few stories on unfortunate, gullible attorneys who have had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen from them:
The FBI reports that the scam begins with e-mail contact from a prospective client who is seeking legal representation in a civil matter, such as a divorce. The supposed client sends the law firm a cashier’s check for a retainer in an amount far exceeding the firm's rate.When the law firm responds that the client has overpaid, the client requests and the unsuspecting firm sends a wire transfer with the refund. It's after the refund that duped firms learned that the cashier's checks are counterfeit.
Gullible? It's hard to believe that any attorney would engage in any such transaction without ever meeting the "client" or verifying that they are who they say they are and that the funds are legit, based only on an email contact. Even if an attorney has not seen the hundreds of similar emails, and thinks for some reason that they are not going to be ripped off, did they believe that they were about to engage in a legal transaction? Greed is a frightening thing.
