Technology Corner

• Publication year: 2017
• Author: David Lederman

Technology Corner

David Lederman

David Lederman is the Immediate Past Chair of the State Bar of California Family Law Section (FLEXCOM). He also served as the Contra Costa County Family Law Section President (and is its current Legislative Director). A Certified Specialist in Family Law since 2001, he is the current Association of Certified Family Law Specialists' Technology Director. Mr. Lederman is a frequent speaker and writer on family law and technology issues and speaks Mandarin.

Do Not Read this Column! Reading it may cause insomnia or panic attacks. You are better off reading Avi Levi's Message from the Chair. It is full of hope and inspiration.

You may still be getting mass-mailed emails (with the recipients clearly suppressed) that seek your assistance to help a wealthy, elderly individual transfer money to a trust account, or the email from your colleague traveling in Europe asking for money to be transferred to him because his wallet was stolen and he needs money to get home (never mind that he was sitting at his desk five minutes before). These types of messages are benign. You know they are scams (I hope). These messages, while they were sent to you, had no specifics from your life.

Conmen are getting more sophisticated. I am the treasurer for the family law section of the Contra Costa Bar Association. I have twice received an email (most recently last week) from the section president saying, essentially, "hey David, we need to do a domestic wire transfer." The interesting facets of this con is that the sender knew the section president's name, spoofed his email address, knew my name and role in the organization, and made it appear as if it was sent through his mobile device. In short, this was not a mass email; the organization was specifically targeted. Attorneys are easy targets; all of the information used was publicly available on our section website.

In August, a Los Angeles County judge admonished a defense firm in a wage an hour lawsuit for sending $500,0000 of a $600,000 settlement to what they thought was a well-known administrator, but was not. The firm received an email from the administrator to wire the $500,000 to its trust account. The problem was that the administrator did not send the email instructions and the money was transferred pursuant to the instructions. The money was gone. The lawsuit and the award were public records and the hacker was able to use that information to perpetrate the fraud.

Think about this for a moment...