Lawyers nailed by cyber crime in South Africa so much insurance refuses to cover them

Hmm. Transfer attorneys will have to step up their game in avoiding and detecting these scams. High time too. Very unfortunate that these scams actually work.
 
Tinuva said:
Hmm. Transfer attorneys will have to step up their game in avoiding and detecting these scams. High time too. Very unfortunate that these scams actually work.
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If there is one thing Lawyers/Attorneys don't do, it is spend money on IT. They instead blow hundreds of thousands on fancy cars and other extravagant luxuries.

This is mainly the small attorney firms, who facilitate ****loads of transfers. Because being a lawyer/attorney means making lots of money with very little effort, everybody and bored housewives are opening their own little backwater firm, and then think and act like they are kind of a big deal.

They had this coming, very much so. Thing is now the client too, suffers because of their complacency.
 
I know of someone that was almost scammed on a property transfer. Luckily for him, the transferring attorney was on the ball and picked up on it in time. The scammer had registered a very similar domain name (using 0 instead of o in the co.za domain) to send the request for payment of funds. We suspect the real estate agent' mail was compromised so the scammer got the relevant info and was spot on it timing for the request of payment.
It was a real mission to get the fraudulent co.za domain deregistered.
 
abandonallhope said:
If there is one thing Lawyers/Attorneys don't do, it is spend money on IT. They instead blow hundreds of thousands on fancy cars and other extravagant luxuries.

This is mainly the small attorney firms, who facilitate ****loads of transfers. Because being a lawyer/attorney means making lots of money with very little effort, everybody and bored housewives are opening their own little backwater firm, and then think and act like they are kind of a big deal.

They had this coming, very much so. Thing is now the client too, suffers because of their complacency.
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This ^^^^
 
abandonallhope said:
If there is one thing Lawyers/Attorneys don't do, it is spend money on IT. They instead blow hundreds of thousands on fancy cars and other extravagant luxuries.

This is mainly the small attorney firms, who facilitate ****loads of transfers. Because being a lawyer/attorney means making lots of money with very little effort, everybody and bored housewives are opening their own little backwater firm, and then think and act like they are kind of a big deal.

They had this coming, very much so. Thing is now the client too, suffers because of their complacency.
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And don't forget the estate agents on every corner.... Classify both as vermin.
 
reactor_sa said:
And don't forget the estate agents on every corner.... Classify both as vermin.
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Except estate agents aren't as snooty. A lot of lawyers on the other hand tend to think that their law degree gives them a sense of entitlement, when it's actually the second easiest thing to do after a BA.

The only reason they make as much money as they do, is because they do all the dirty and time consuming admin that everyone else couldn't be bothered with. That, and they have knowledge of the butchered version of English that they converse with each other in...
 
I had a lawyer to whom I supplied some PCs. After 9 months he calls me and tells me it takes 20 mins to boot up. His 2Tb drive was 99.5% full. Each document on there had been saved in at least 30 different versions. His secretary blamed it on him, so I spent 30 mins deleting it all and it then booted in 1 minute
 
reactor_sa said:
And don't forget the estate agents on every corner.... Classify both as vermin.
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Why the generalization?

Sure there are bad apples in EVERY industry, but to label them all as "vermin" is uncalled for.

I work with several agencies and they are some of the most hard-working people I know who do most of their work without any assurances that they will get paid for it.
 
Kingofmybbknowitalls said:
Why the generalization?

Sure there are bad apples in EVERY industry, but to label them all as "vermin" is uncalled for.

I work with several agencies and they are some of the most hard-working people I know who do most of their work without any assurances that they will get paid for it.
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Call it bad experience. Bouncing back and forth between estate agent and trsnsfer attorney of unsaid agent... Nope, they both out to make a quick buck at your expense.
 
Kingofmybbknowitalls said:
Why the generalization?

Sure there are bad apples in EVERY industry, but to label them all as "vermin" is uncalled for.

I work with several agencies and they are some of the most hard-working people I know who do most of their work without any assurances that they will get paid for it.
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My one friend is an attorney & even he agrees that the bad rep is justified. It's a profession filled with despicable people in general as far as I'm concerned.
 
chrisc4290 said:
I had a lawyer to whom I supplied some PCs. After 9 months he calls me and tells me it takes 20 mins to boot up. His 2Tb drive was 99.5% full. Each document on there had been saved in at least 30 different versions. His secretary blamed it on him, so I spent 30 mins deleting it all and it then booted in 1 minute
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So no shared storage, no backups?, and given that they bill in 1 minute increments, time is money, you couldn't stick an ssd in there?

Hmm..
 
lsheed_cn said:
So no shared storage, no backups?, and given that they bill in 1 minute increments, time is money, you couldn't stick an ssd in there?

Hmm..
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I am sorry to say but I knew about this story before broke.. let's just say I was asked to assist with some of the initial investigation. Of course, they didn't want to pay my fees to solve the problem... so off I went :)
 
Electron1 said:
I know of someone that was almost scammed on a property transfer. Luckily for him, the transferring attorney was on the ball and picked up on it in time. The scammer had registered a very similar domain name (using 0 instead of o in the co.za domain) to send the request for payment of funds. We suspect the real estate agent' mail was compromised so the scammer got the relevant info and was spot on it timing for the request of payment.
It was a real mission to get the fraudulent co.za domain deregistered.
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I know of at least 1 estate agent email that has been compromised.

Some don't listen in terms of IT security until they have been compromised 3 or more times.

Then they start taking it seriously.
I would risk to speculate that 90%+ of these fraud cases originate due to an estate agent company being lax on IT security due to the suspected it-won't-happen to me
 
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