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Attorneys, Paralegals Beware: Wire Instruction Fraud Plagues N.C. Lawyers

 Stell,CamilleBy Camille Stell

Over the last few weeks, Lawyers Mutual has received multiple reports of North Carolina attorneys who were targeted by scammers attempting to divert seller closing proceeds following real estate transactions. Unfortunately, several of these attacks were successful and hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen and are very unlikely to be recovered.

I’ve asked our claims attorney, Troy Crawford, to talk with me about what went wrong and how to prevent it.

Troy: While the details of the recent scams are emerging, it appears hackers first became aware of the closing by compromising email accounts of differing parties.  Sometimes the attorney account was compromised, sometimes the seller’s account was compromised but the most common scenario was the realtor’s account was being monitored by international criminal organizations.

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