Here’s a new fraud: people going to real law firm websites, copying the firm name and lawyer’s picture, and setting up a fake law firm that looks like the real firm, but with different phone numbers and email addresses so that the fraudster is the one to manage the contact.
It appears that fraudsters are copying real estate pictures from websites, posting a listing of the house with a very low asking price, and having the potential purchaser contact their “lawyer” to send the deposit. Of course, they never get their money back when they realize it’s a fraud and the “seller” and “lawyer” are long gone.
If you are at all concerned that the lawyer on the other end of the screen might not be real, you can always go to the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Lawyer and Paralegal Directory. You can look up the lawyer’s name, and see if the contact information matches what you have.
