Victims duped by increasingly sophisticated Internet scams

In late February, The Bar Plan alerted lawyers about a check-kiting Internet scam that has ensnared some Missouri attorneys.

According to the alert published in the Missouri Bar’s ESQ., a party claiming to be a foreign corporation contacts an attorney via e-mail and asks the lawyer to represent it in a debt-collection matter involving another company. The client promises to pay the lawyer a contingency fee.

The client may send out one last demand letter. The debtor company responds quickly with a check to pay off the debt. The attorney deposits the check, takes his or her fee out of amount and wires the rest to the client. By the time it is discovered that the check is a fake, the "client" is long gone and the attorney has lost a lot of money.

Attorneys aren’t the only people who have been duped: The checks are also often realistic enough to pass the initial fraud review at the bank.

St. Louis criminal defense lawyer Pat Kiernan reports he’s been hired to represent several individuals who have been victimized in similar schemes. These individuals were contacted by someone claiming to represent a foreign corporation and offered employment as a transfer agent. The individual receives checks from another company, deposit them into his or her bank account and wires the money to the “employer.” The victim receives a portion of the funds as payment for his or her services.

Once again, the individuals believe that the checks are authentic and they pass the initial fraud review at the bank. When the fraud is finally uncovered, the “employer” is long gone. The victim is wiped out financially -- and the bad news keeps coming. One of Kiernan's clients is facing criminal fraud charges and others have received letters from the banks threatening prosecution unless the money and fees are repaid.