$3M Transferred in Fraud Scheme, Law Firm Gets Sued, Says It Followed Client Instructions

July 29th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Emerging Litigation & Risk, HB Risk Notes, Law Firm Operations, News|Tags: , , , , |

$3M Transferred in Fraud Scheme, Law Firm Sued, Says It Followed Client Instructions Two related foundations hired a big law firm to sell stock and execute a merger via wire transfer. Cyber fraudsters had other ideas. Posing as stock seller, and intercepting a verification email, the perpetrators grabbed $3.1 million. The foundations sued the firm in state court in Utah, claiming the firm should have red-flagged certain inconsistencies and known it was being duped. The firm should also have picked up the phone to verify the source of the fraudulent emails and documents. Not so fast, the firm maintains. The plaintiff was not a client and it was only acting on wiring instructions sent via the plaintiff's email system and provided the instructions to the paying agent. The money was sent to the account of an alleged furniture company in Hong Kong. Sorenson, et al. v.  Continental Stock Transfer, Tassel Parent, and Holland & Knight, 3rd. Jud. Dist. Ct., Salt Lake Co., Utah. Download

McLoughlin on Artificial Intelligence in Banking

July 25th, 2018|Categories: Corporate Compliance, HB Risk Notes, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

"Capital adequacy requirements are not the only kind of regulation that AI is helping banks to meet. An even bigger area is monitoring of trading activities for misconduct and abuse. The Bank of England estimates that misconduct by traders has cost banks a global cumulative of $320 billion to date. For this very large reason, banks are aggressively deploying machine learning to monitor the behavior of their traders and detect unusual behavior." Read Michael McLoughlin's post on LinkedIn. Michael McLoughlin is Global Digital Transformation Partner & Advocate with Microsoft.

Joshua Gold on Cyber Crime and Insurance

July 24th, 2018|Categories: HB Risk Notes, Insurance, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

With the amount of trickery going into thefts and embezzlements these days, crime insurance companies too often use the many steps involved in a fraudulent scheme to argue that losses are indirect and otherwise uncovered. The recent decisions of the Second Circuit and Sixth Circuit on the “direct loss” argument and the scope of computer fraud coverage are important victories for policyholders generally, making clear that where the predominant step in the chain is some type of covered fraudulent misconduct involving a computer, a court is not going to entertain a direct loss defense to excuse the insurance company from paying. As such, policyholders should be familiar with their crime coverage and promptly notify all potentially implicated lines of insurance coverage when a cybercriminal is afoot. -- Joshua Gold, Anderson Kill  Read Josh's complete article.  Joshua Gold is Chair of Anderson Kill’s Cyber Insurance Recovery Practice and was amicus counsel for United Policyholders in the Medidata Solutions, Inc. v. Federal Insurance Company case before the Second Circuit.

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