Solicitor Phone Scam

[Bigbad]

A solicitor has lost £734,000 of clients money to fraudsters.
Victim or fool?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34432596

[aelmpvw]

both i suppose

[anotheoldgit]

Perhaps they can afford to pay their clients back, after all they charge enough to be able to do so?

[woofgang]

not enough information here to say, but I am thinking fool.

[Gromit]

I would expect a solicitor to have more intelligence and be less susceptible to such an obvious scam. So this is clearly an instance of the Solicitor being negligent with their clients money.

There have been several cases recently of large amounts of money being stolen. Hopefully the publicity about these cases will educated the publicwho will be more aware of how the scammers work.

[mikey4444]

I listened to this woman being interviewed on Saturday's MoneyBox, on Radio 4. She fell for what is now a widely-publicised scam, and she ought to have known better. When she dialled her bank to check, the fraudster was still on the line !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06f4vqf#play

This might have caught people out a few years ago, but it shouldn't still be doing that now.

Rule number one ...put the phone down, wait a few moments, and then check that you have a dialling tone back, before calling your bank. Dial tone...the most basic thing in the world of telephones.....the same tone that we have been listening to for 60-70 years !

Failing that, use another telephone to call your bank.

I don't really understand the ins and outs of what has happened to this solicitor since the original fraud, but it was her fault to begin with. I have very little sympathy. This didn't happen to some hapless OAP....it happened to a professional woman, who should have known better.

[Svejk]

Or crook, possibly.

[Khandro]

Does anyone know which and whose account it was paid into?

[mikey4444]

Khandro...these fraudsters open up special bank accounts, take the money and run and then abandon them.