Exposing Attorney Lead Spam, Scammers & Trolls
As an attorney, you get bombarded with Emails all day every day. Some are legitimate and some are obvious spam, but there’s a third category that’s been a pervasive problem for a long time. I call it “Lead Spam” and it can cost you time, and potentially a lot of money.
What is Lead Spam?
Lead spam & scams is an email that looks like it might be a legitimate lead from a potential client, but in actuality it’s a scammer trying to get your attention. Lead spammers target higher payouts, therefore they target people who deal with larger sums of money like attorneys and financial professionals and it almost always involves a wire to or from a foreign country. Because of their target, they can be very believable at first. These trolls look for attorneys to contact and try to scam money from using a mix of legitimate tactics and bullshit.
JD Supra reports on other wire fraud and phishing scams using spoofed Emails here.
The Purchase Agreement Scam
A very popular scam among attorney targets is the “Do you handle purchase agreements” lead ,which is essentially a wire transfer scam. There are variations of this scam, but typically the scammer is wanting to pay your retainer in full from a foreign bank account, then after the money is sent they immediately request a refund, hoping that you’ll send it immediately. In your bank it looks like the wire has landed, but unbeknownst to you, they’ve already cancelled the wire in their country and the money is in limbo – which eventually be returned to their account. Another variation is that the scammer needs to purchase supplies but the “seller” needs to receive funds from a US source, or at the last minute there’s a change in wiring instructions.
Lead Spam Methods & Alerts
Lead spammers can be very sneaky, and the larger the potential payout the more underhanded and sophisticated they are. Here’s a few warning signals that you might be the target of a lead scam:
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You’ve received an email lead and it is either very sparse with information, or has a huge amount of information. Most people naturally write a few sentences about their matter and want to discuss the details in person or over the phone at a later time.
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The lead is from a domain based email that is not an actual website, or it’s a dummy website. Let’s say you get an email from xxxx@johnsawesomecompany.com and you try to go to johnsawesomecompany.com. It may either redirect to a new URL or it goes to a simple landing page with only a few pages. A decent website and Email address are easy to set up and label with whatever name you want, you should maintain healthy skepticism.
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The lead spammer either won’t or can’t talk in person or over the phone. For any number of creative reasons, you’ll find that they almost never can actually talk to you or they’re in a different part of the world making it impossible to meet. If they were facing a legal issue, don’t you think they’d find a way to talk to their lawyer personally?
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They want to send you a retainer immediately. Here’s where it gets interesting… how could a scammer want to send me money? Usually, after they’ve sent the money to retain you, the next day they’ll send you an Email saying they’ve changed their mind and you need to send the money back immediately. They’re often taking advantage of banking loopholes that might allow them to clawback the funds within a certain time period – leaving you holding the bag if you’ve sent them refund and they simultaneously processed a payment cancellation with their bank – which may be overseas.
Known Lead Scammers (Updated July, 2020)
Starting today, (Jan 8, 2019), we will maintain and update the following list of known scammer names so you can spend your time more wisely. Hopefully, as this post grows in popularity and attorneys link to it from their blogs and share it on social media it will become the #1 result when you search these names. It’s important to note that these people are probably not scammers in real life, but the real dirtbag spammers are smart enough to know that you’ll be researching a name on Google if you get a lead. Often, they are trying to impersonate or spoof a legitimate, yet obscure person to further validate themselves to you. If any of these are really you, we are sorry for the confusion on behalf of the Internet!
Kuo Tseng – Chicony Power Technology Co., Ltd.
Dr. Kuo Hua Tseng who claims to be President of Chicony Power Technology Co., Ltd. contacted 4 of my websites last night all with the same message. You’ll notice from the intake form that the Email address is different from the website address listed in the legitimate company details. If you go to ChiconyPowerGroup.com you’ll notice that it’s not a website, but if you went to the legitimate website ChiconyPower.com it was a real website at the time of this writing. That’s is because this is a scammer Email address built on a domain designed to deceive you.
Prudent Luis Sanchez – Inheritance Lead Spammer
This lead spam from Prudent Sanchez claims to be a Partner at a law firm in London & Spain by the name of “Prudent & Sanchez” and even set up a dummy website of PrudentSanchez.com to further lend credibility to the ridiculous story. The email mjoselawwell@gmail.com was associated with this scam. Please be aware that this has no affiliation with another attorney of a similar name in Texas, who IS a legitimate lawyer.
Michael Ozegowski, ATLAS Elektronik – Intellectual Property & Patent Lead Spammer
This lead spam for Michael Ozegowski came from patricktreacy7@eircom.net, but the email was labeled with Michael’s name. Eircom.net is a redirect and it’s a mismatched name/email address. This spoof name has hit many attorneys I work with and is almost always the same format, unfortunately Michael Ozegowski appears to be a legitimate person – just not someone looking for an IP lawyer.
Tadanobu Fujiwara – Rohm Integrated Systems Thailand Co., Ltd., Litigation Spammer
This lead spam came into my contact form on my company website, so how “Tadanobu Fujiwata” thinks we’re a law firm is besides me. It’s clear that this lead follows the same format as before, burner Email address of tadanobufujiwara753@gmail.com. I think they hand out scripts in scammer school.
Kikuo Kondo – Kondo Electronic Industry, Litigation Spammer
This lead spam for Kikuo Kondo came to a contact form from my website, a website that discusses legal marketing, asking about my retainer fees for a litigation matter. If a person was legitimately looking for an attorney why would they contact me about my legal fees. Also, the email associated with the spammer is a gmail address kondoelectronic@gmail.com – seems legit.
Submit a Name
It’s important that we try to be right in making a list like this, so it has to be blatantly obvious (like above) that this is a lead scammer. Also, we would not want you to share any Emails from a potential client unless you were 100% sure it was a scammer. If you have further questions about SEO for lawyers please be sure to contact us today! If you’d like to anonymously submit a name and photo you can Email us at dougeverestlegalmarketing.com.
President & Founder – Everest Legal Marketing, LLC
Doug Bradley is the Founder and CEO of Everest Legal Marketing. Doug has over a decade of experience specifically in legal marketing, and foremost with expertise in Search Engine Optimization for law firms. Doug has been quoted on numerous websites, co-hosted many MCLE sessions, and has advised law firms of all sizes on the topic of effective marketing and ethical SEO strategies.
