Be Alert to Cyber Fraud: A Warning to Clients

Members of the public must be vigilant of cyber fraud at all times. Scammers will often pose as a trusted and well known law firm or create a fake profile of a solicitor in order to make email recipients feel that the email is real and legitimate.

We are keen to ensure that our clients and member of the public don’t accidentally send funds to imposters pretending to be us. In July 2024 there was a spam email being circulated asking the recipient to transfer funds to the bank accounted listed in the email. The spammer made it look like the email was coming from one of our Directors, Tom Stendall. Please be aware that this email DID NOT come from Tom Stendall, or from Hopkins Solicitors, or from within any part of our organisation or IT systems.

We urge anyone that has received an email from Tom Stendall asking you to transfer money, to please forward a copy of that email to us at enquiries@hopkins-solicitors.co.uk so that we can foward the IP address details onto the legal authorities that are investigating the fraudster and scam. Thankfully to date, we have not been informed that anyone has actually transferred them money.

If you are a client and received an email from us in regards to an outstanding balance that you owe us, please ring our Acccounts department on our head office main number 01623468468, to confirm the email is legitimate and to confirm what bank details to transfer the funds to. Our staff never email clients asking them to pay us. This is one area of communiation, where we feel paper invoices sent to your home via post, is the safest way to commuicate with you about the status of your account.

In addition, we recommend clients of any law firm should consider the following cyberfraud tips:

Always remember:

• Our bank account details will not be changed at the last minute.
• You can protect yourself by making a transfer of a small amount prior to the main transfer and checking it has been properly received.
• Be wary of any request to change payment details
• if the solicitor who has requested funds is not well known to you, or you are not sure if the request is genuine, or if you just want to be cautious we would recommend taking steps to verify the solicitor and their details (including bank details) before sending any money.
• You can check this by calling us and only speaking to someone you know and checking that they know enough about the transaction so that they are legitimate and checking the bank details with them.

Some Do’s and Don’ts:

• Do not send funds to a bank account other than the one you are notified of at the outset;
• Do not use insecure public Wi-Fi systems to check emails when house purchases are ongoing as fraudsters often use these to steal information;
• Do not post statuses on social media about buying/selling your house or getting a mortgage. Fraudsters may get hold of this information and so become aware that the next step will probably be a large financial transaction;
• Do use strong passwords for your accounts and have antivirus installed on your devices;
• Do contact the firm at the telephone number that has been provided at the outset and not to rely on number changes stated in emails
• Do be suspicious of emails that do not sound right, such as those that employ incorrect use of terminology or bad grammar; and
• Do be wary of opening attachments.