Law Firms Getting Scammed And What It Has To Do With China.
If you are a lawyer, you have probably gotten one: an email from a company (usually in China,
Hong Kong or Taiwan) saying they want to retain you to help them collect on debts owed to them by American companies.
WATCH OUT. It is almost certainly a scam.
And it works as follows:
The company retains you to collect on its debts from some company and then that company very quickly agrees to settle and to send you a check. You get the check, deposit in your trust account and then send your client's share to it and retain your contingency fee. The problem arises a few weeks later when your bank reports the check to have been a counterfeit and you are on the hook.
These emails are getting sent out every day and law firms are getting snared. For more on these scams, check out asiabizblog, which has been writing on these for a while.
Comments (5)
Read through and enter the discussion by using the form at the endAlex - August 8, 2009 6:27 PM
Sounds awfully like a variant on a Nigerian 'lost fortune' style scam!
Daniel W. Kwong - August 9, 2009 1:54 AM
Many of them, not only in China. Too bad.
uk visa - August 10, 2009 2:45 AM
What's the world coming too when people try to scam law firms!
:)
Twofish - August 10, 2009 6:15 AM
One reason the scam works is that by law, US banks are required to credit a check within certain time limits, however just because a bank has credited a check in your account doesn't mean that it is good.
One fun thinG about checks is that there is no way that the system has for verifying that a check is "good." The system screams when a check is bad, but there is no way to confirm that a check is good.
Jerome Cole - August 12, 2009 4:27 AM
If the Asian "firm" agrees to a 25-40% contingency fee right off the bat without trying to haggle you down to 5-10% alarm bells should be ringing.