Attempted Scams Continue to Fill Lawyers' In-Boxes
As the ABA Journal reports of new scams hitting Texas law firms, I continue to receive emails that look like scams.
Without exception, the scam emails are generic, like this email received today:
Dear Counselor
My Company is currently in need of a commercial litigation lawyer, there is an urgent matter. If you can help with our legal need kindly get back to me immediately for more details.
Mr. Eric Bahir
Sales Manager
Tatworth Electronics
29 Pine Drive
Great Neck NY 11021
Tel 516 589 5281
Fax 516-706-2571
Toll Free 1-800-951-6484
ericbahir@aol.com
ericba@tatworth.com
www.tatworth.com
That's how every company I've ever represented gets its lawyers. Generic spam emails.
Imagine our happiness when I was at Baker Donelson and we received an email from Ford Motor Company to defend it in products cases: "Dear Counselor, our company is currently in need of a products litigation lawyer. Kindly get back to me immediately for more details."
Isn't this how you've gotten all your corporate clients?
If you're going to go to the trouble to find my email address and send me an email, why not write “Dear Phil” or “Mr. Thomas” or something personalized? They never do.
If you're going to claim to be in New York, why not write the email like English is your native language? “Kindly get back to me”? If this guy is really from New York he would say something like: “give me a call, jackass.”
Or why not have my email address in the “to” line? In the “to” line of this email was the email address for a lawyer at a large Mississippi law firm. A lawyer who does not identify commercial litigation as his practice area.
Of course, this guy did go to the trouble of setting up a website for the bogus looking company Tatworth Electronics. Google “Tatworth Electronics” and see how many results you get for this “international” company. I got four hits. All directed at Tatworth's website. By comparison, the local restaurant Soulshine Pizza generates over 30 pages of search results on Google.
The scary thing is that people must still be falling for these scams. Otherwise, they would not still be trying it.
For prior posts on lawyer email scams, see here and here.
I'll wait to hear from someone who calls up the company and offers their legal services. Should be pretty hilarious.
Anyone who falls for one of these deserves to be scammed. If you are that stupid, you don't need to be practicing law (and, yes, I realize that there are plenty of attorneys that stupid who ARE practicing law and, indeed, they are usually the ones making megabucks but still . . . .)
Most of this is accomplished with spambots. Your email address was scraped from here:
http://www.msbar.org/lawyerdirectory_by_last.php?first_letter=T
The spammer is in Nigeria and likely got most of the text from somewhere else. It costs virtually nothing to send these to the entire Mississippi Bar so there's no risk.
If you're feeling adventurous and have a lot of extra time, you can toy with these people. See here: http://www.419eater.com/index.php
If you're unadventurous and/or busy, that site will at least provide a bit of catharsis.
Similar scam hit BradleyArant for $400k a few years ago.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/bradley_arant_reportedly_scammed_out_of_more_than_400k/
The other obvious giveaway to lawyerspam (interestingly, not in this one) is that the "matter" is always "in your jurisdiction." There is no effort to tailor the email to lawyers in Mississippi, Idaho, Vermont, Guam, etc. It's always just "in your jurisdiction."
Unfortunately, these scam e-mails sometimes can get in the way of legitimate mail. About a year ago I had an e-mail from someone I'd never heard of saying he had a litigation matter in my state that he needed handled. It was worded so generically that I deleted it as one more scam e-mail. Weeks later, a regular client of mine told me that he tried to refer a new client to me but his friend never heard back on the e-mail he sent to me and hired someone else. Unfortunately, the legitimate new business e-mail I got was so vague that I wrongly assumed it was just one more scam e-mail.
I've begun responding to these. My collection of "cashier's checks" is now up to two. In each instance, I've strung the scammer along for weeks before they gave up trying to get their share. I insisted upon meeting them in person, regardless of where they are. "Oh, you are in Singapore? I happen to have a conference there in 3 weeks. I'll meet you after my last session." It's a waste of about 5 minutes a day, but the entertainment value is excellent.
Found your blog (excellent, by the way) while Googling "Tatworth". This is one of the better scam emails out there, if only because the sender someone "copied" a lawyer I know at a major firm. Starts to make you think it was ar referral until you re-read the email and do the Google search as you discuss above.
These morons just called not 10 minutes ago. They allegedly have a zillion offices, but you get an answering machine when they call? someone prosecute these guys. Thanks for having this website!