East London attorneys are under repeated attack from cyber criminals who succeed in duping clients into making online transfers into bank accounts that seemingly belonging to the law firm.

The scam has been described as ‘insanely prevalent’ by a forensics expert, according to a Daily Dispatch report.

The newspaper says it has received reports of various local firms losing large sums of money after clients received e-mails or cellphone messages purportedly from their attorney with ‘new’ bank account details.

The transactions relate to conveyancing, which ordinarily results in large financial transactions at the time a property is registered in the name of the purchaser.

A senior attorney reportedly said: ‘There are big numbers involved in conveyancing transactions – a single incident could destroy a practice.’

East London-based digital forensic scientist Jason Jordaan said: ‘It is insanely prevalent. Not a week goes by that someone is not hit by this fraud.’

The range of fraud is from R10 000 to R3m, targeting every business sector from manufacturing to agri-industry, retailing to services. Jordaan said in the past week he investigated a loss of R1.5m by one local company.

Law firms are targeted because of the chance to score big on conveyancing transactions.

‘There is money in conveyancing,’ said Jordaan. ‘There are many law firms in East London who have been hit,’ he said, but added ‘the first rule of conveyancing’ is never to discuss business losses through fraud such as compromised e-mail servers.

‘Law firms are good at doing the legal stuff. But generally they don’t have extensive IT departments, or may have one or two IT people or outsource to an external service. Small single or two-lawyer practices have little in place, they are more concerned with keeping the lights on than worrying about IT stuff.’

Full Daily Dispatch report