Spoof And Phishing E-Mails

Email spoofing is the creation of email messages with a forged sender address. The core email protocols do not have any mechanism for authentication, making it common for spam and phishing emails to use such spoofing to mislead or even prank the recipient about the origin of the message.

Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information or data, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details, by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Typically carried out by email spoofing, instant messaging, and text messaging, phishing often directs users to enter personal information at a fake website that matches the look and feel of the legitimate site. – From Wikipedia

Fraud through Spoof and Phishing E-Mails is costing business owners millions in South Africa daily. Most perpetrators are professional scammers and catching them is extremely difficult. Where they are successfully traced, recovering the money is close to impossible. We have seen in investigations that bank employees many times simply do not seem to care and shockingly in some instances their employees are in on the scams.

UNBEKNOWN TO MANY VICTIMS OF SCAMS:

  1. Financial Institutions could be held vicariously liable for damages.
  2. The FICA Act places a duty on all banks to report certain financial transactions of a specific threshold or frequency of occurrence.

Several exceptions relating to long-term insurance such as life, disability or medical policies and investment in unit trusts or on the stock exchange such as pension funds, retirement annuities or provident funds are exempt from reporting.

In addition, accountable institutions are to report any suspicious or unusual transactions to the Centre. These include businesses receiving, transferring, or laundering money or the proceeds from unlawful activities or property connected to the financing of terrorist and related activities that has no apparent business or lawful purpose is conducted for the purpose of avoiding the FIC Act requirement.

Other reporting includes the evasion or attempted evasion of a responsibility to pay any tax, duty or levy imposed by the Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service.

  1. In several judgements the courts ruled that a master who uses servants creates the risk of harm to others if the servant proves to be “negligent, inefficient or untrustworthy” and it follows that if the servant’s acts in doing his master’s work or his activities are incidental to or connected with it, or are carried out in a negligent or improper manner so as to cause harm to a third party, the master is responsible for the harm.

OUR SERVICES INCLUDE:

  1. Drafting affidavits to open a criminal case docket.
  2. Liaising with the SAPS’ Investigating Officer and aiding them. – Fraud Investigations, in general, is a complex field and, unfortunately, in the SAPS it seems to lack the attention it requires.
  3. Drafting the Subpoenas in terms of Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act for the SAPS Investigating Officer.
  4. Aiding the SAPS Investigating Officer with the expert perusal of the documents supplied by the banks. (Account opening documents, bank statements, etc.)
  5. Drafting additional subpoenas where the stolen money had been moved around and perusal of the new documents provided by the banks.
  6. Identifying suspects and using our networks, provide the suspect/s’ information to the SAPS Investigating Officer.
  7. Looking for the mistakes the banks made and draft a report which our client’s attorneys can use to sue the banks for the losses incurred, where the bank employee/s failed to do their work properly.
  8. Liaising with attorneys in litigation against banks.

CLIENTS ARE ADVISED TO CONTACT US AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AS THIS WILL PROVIDE BETTER PROSPECTS OF RECOVERING THE STOLEN MONEY.

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