New Name

Let's add to the the list of names pretending to be members of Alexander JLO Solicitors. Welcome to the Rogues Gallery, Mr Kenneth Lum. He has his own personal email account lumkenneth@yahoo.com. This is a sure sign he is not part of a law firm - or he would be using the official law firm email address. The authorities have been informed. Be very careful.

Spot the Errors

The latest attempts to deprive the public of their well earned money coming from these fraudsters is shown up by their simple lack of knowledge of the English language and English grammar. For example a person pretending to be associated with Alexander JLO Solicitors, called Fred Harrison, (who never has been associated with this firm) talks about his having been "given final notice to present his relative to come for his assets or else it will be forfeited". Not sure what that means but any English lawyer using a phrase like that would be reported to the Plain English Campaign! I won't bother correcting it or pointing to the other obvious errors in the latest batch of emails from Harrison but always check when you receive these requests and remember there is no such thing as a 'free lunch'.

Spelling Lesson

Someone recently sent me an email that they had received from another scam merchant.
I will protect individual names but basically the email ran as follows

Good day M
This is a personal E-mail directed to you and I request that it be treated as such. I am Micheal Brian a solicitor at law practicing in London.
I have a proposition to bring to your attention if you would be interested. This is about late JJ. I have been given final notice to present his relative to come for his assets or else it will be forfeited. I have done thorough search in order to identify any of his relatives, but all efforts have been abortive.
kindly contact me via my private email for detailed information and better confidentiality: m.brianesq@gmail.com
Sincerely,
Micheal Brian Esq.

The lessons to be learned are as follows:
1. These people can't write in decent English let along legal English;
2. There are spelling and grammatical errors right left and centre (but I don't propose to give them a free lesson in how to get their fraudulent activities under control);
3. They don't even know how to spell their own fictitious name correctly - Micheal indeed!
4. Never never reply to these people.

Smith Baker

Mr Smith Baker is the latest name to join the Hall of Fame. Don't reply to him either. It doesn't even sound like a name in the U.K. Mr Baker is not a member of this law firm and has no authority to act on this firm's behalf. Ignore him and certainly don't send him money.
And if you get any emails from alexanderjlo@hotmail.co.uk they did not come from us. Ignore them too. Better still pass them onto Hotmail so they can deal with these people. We shall continue to report them to the authorities and take whatever (legal) steps are avilable to us. The time will surely come when these scam merchants get what they deserve.

Bridge over Troubled Waters

The latest name in circulation being put out as a member of our law firm at Alexander JLO brings back very fond memories, that of Paul Simon. He has no link with the real Paul Simon, who has been singing his sweet songs for as long as I can remember, and that goes back a very long time. Maybe our scam merchants should remember: firstly I am a Rock; secondly one man's ceiling is another man's floor; and finally we keep the customer satisfied. So keep away from any emails you receive pretending to come from Paul Simon of Alexander JLO Solicitors; he doesn't exist. Don't send him any money, he is not what he pretends to be. Save your money for the Best of Simon and Garfunkel!

Rogues Gallery

I am still being asked regularly by email to confirm that the fraudsters after your monay are really members of our law firm. I make a habit of replying to each email I receive confirming the true position. Many such fraudulent emails are sent via Facebook. The names used by these fraudsters tend to be used time and time again. So I shall keep a list of what I will call the Rogues Gallery. There may be genuine people with these names and of course such innocent people are not who I am referring to. But the following names are not associated with Alexander JLO Solicitors nor have they ever been associated - even if they pretend otherwise!
David Bamber (his is the most popular name used)
West Clinton
Mark Barker
Matthew Baker
Daniel Baker
Herbert Owen
George Baker

More Spam

When I was a kid, Spam came in a neat tin and was what our dear Mama placed in front of my brothers and me at tea-time when she'd run out of ideas. It was a form of canned meat. We had it with baked beans.

Spam is equally unwelcome these days. Some is harmless, trying to sell rubbish you never have any intention of buying. Other spam can be serious if you take it seriously.

I am referring to the scams known as 419, named after the law that makes them illegal in certain African jurisdictions. For more information a good source is the web-site at www.419scam.org.

In the past few days, I have been at the receiving end of literally hundreds of returned emails from someone pretending to be me. He uses the email address peterjohnson@strompost.org. He pretends to be have funds available in South Korea. He thinks Hong Kong is part of South Korea (which of course it isn't). If you take up his offer he will want you to pay his fees up front - money which you will never see again.

Don't take these guys seriously. Bin the emails. If you want to file a report do so by emailing abuse@strompost.com as this is the email address he really wants you to use in getting back to him.

Interesting

Hello Alexander JLO Solicitors. Scams seem to be becoming more and more prevelant. It is good to see someone doing something about them. Keep up the good work.

Another Tip

Another way of checking whether the bogus solicitor who has written to you as part of his scam is genuine or not is to check him out at the Law Society web-site. All firms of solicitors and all individual solicitors in England have to be registered with the Law Society. Alexander JLO Solicitors are registered there (under registration number 258699). All our solicitors are rgeistered there by name, individually.

How do you check whether Mr Owens, or Mr Leicester, or Mr Clinton - all names used by the scammers recently - are real solicitors or not. Go to the Law Society web-site at www.lawsociety.org.uk. If you want to check the name of an individual solicitor, go to the section of the Law Society web-site that helps you 'Find a Solicitor', then enter the name of Herbert Owens (or whatever name he is using this week) as part of the Solicitor search options. I bet you can't find him. But with your help I will suggest how he might be found.

The Signs of a Scam

When you receive a message, usually an email or via Facebook, from someone pretending to work for a law firm like Alexander JLO Solicitors here are some easy questions to ask yourself:

1. Check the web-site of the law firm the sender of the message pretends to work for. Is his name shown as one of the lawyers? Is the telephone number the same as the number on the message you received?
2. What telephone number is shown on the message you received? Does it start with the digits 07 or +44 7. This is a sure sign something is wrong. These are numbers reserved for UK mobile phones (cell phones) Anyone can buy a UK mobile number and pretend to be in the UK even if they reside or do business from outside the UK. In this case it means the person using the number is trying to pretend he is in the UK when he isn't. Ask yourself why should a lawyer not use his office phone number? Answer because he is not working for that law firm!
3. And most important - what email address has the person contacting you asked you to use in order to get back to him? Compare that email address with the email address of the firm of lawyers found on the web-site (in the case of Alexander JLO Solicitors info@london-law.co.uk or [the name of the lawyer]@london-law.co.uk.
4. The scam artist will never use the business email address of the firm he pretends to be associated with (otherwise he'd never see your message in reply). He will have set up his own private email address with (usually in our experience) a yahoo or a gmail account. A genuine lawyer would never use his or her private email account for business; they would use the business email account!

Next time I will make some suggestions on what to do when you receive these emails

The Sting (cont'd)

Mr Leicester wants your money. So does Mr Baker, Mr Clinton, Mr Daniels and all the other fictitious names the scammers have been using lately. He will write to you and tell you that a long-lost relative of yours has died, that you have been traced, and that you stand to gain the benefit of the money left in the estate. He may contact you via Facebook, or Twitter, or just by sending you an email to your normal email address. His message sounds very convincing. If you contact him he will lead you into his scheme very gently, by asking you to prove your identity (so you send him your passport details), and by asking you to provide your bank details so he can transfer to your account the money in the estate of your deceased relative.

Mr Leicester pretends he is attached to a genuine law firm - like Alexander JLO Solicitors! He may use our logo, our address and other details he has found on our web-site. He is very convincing and you would like to believe him - who wouldn't - and once he has hooked you he will reel you in gently. As the time comes for him to send you the money from the estate he will suddenly tell you that an unforeseen bank charge has cropped up - not a lot, say £100 (GBP). He will tell you that it is not possible under English law to simply deduct the bank charge from the money in the estate. So he asks you to send him the money. And if you do, there will be a second and a third request for more money to cover more unforeseen bank charges or administration fees. When he has taken as much as he can from you, guess what. It all goes quiet. You will not hear from him again. Your money has disappeared. There never was a long-lost relative.

Next time I will let you into the mistakes these scam merchants will make that should help you realise what is going on.

The Sting

Firstly forgive the cheesy photograph of Senior Partner (taken following a visit to the beaiutiful Plaza de Velarde in Santander in Spain) - we will upload one shortly of the four Alexander JLO Partners in our firm, tripping down memory lane, walking over that famous zebra crossing at Abbey Road - we are still Beatles fans!

So here is how the scam works. You will receive an email from a law firm. You Google the name of the law firm and it turns out to be real, it has its own web-site. So you start taking the email seriously. It asks to be your friend - it wants to create an association, an alliance, with you. And the email comes from a lawyer within the firm- say a Mr Leicester. The names always sound as if they should be very English, but anyone in England will tell you the name is so unusual that it probably doesn't exist here.

The email you receive tells you that one of your relatives (funnily enough with the same surname) has died and his estate has not yet been distributed because his next of kin can't be tracked down. Mr Leicester wants you to contact him to check out whether you are the lucky person to inherit the money. More on this scam later!

Beware Scam Emails Bearing Gifts!

It was the Trojans who fell for the first big scam of them all when the Greeks entered the city of Troy leading to its destruction. These days the Trojans are blamed for hacking into your computer with something nasty - and it's not a wooden horse!

But the scams continue and we at Alexander JLO Solicitors are doing the best we can to bring those responsible to justice.

A bit of history first. We work in England in a law firm in London - in fact the first law firm to arrive in the business area known as London Docklands in the 1980's when Canary Wharf was just a glint in the eye of some very clever Canadians. The first thing we did was to register the domain name www.london-law.co.uk and because it is such an eye catching name we have seen into the murky world of the scam artists. More to follow!