(5 min read)

Getting scammed through the court system?  Be careful, it can happen!

Recently, one of the lawyers we are in touch with shared this story with us.

Her client runs a commercial garden nursery business supplying plants to residential housing developments. She was in a dispute with her (now ex) business partner about a joint development they had worked on, and the business partner sued her.

Usually, you have 28 days to put your defence together for this type of dispute, but the client needed more time, so the solicitors agreed an extension of a further 28 days – known as a consent order. This extension was still going through the court process, but a clerk at the claimant’s lawyers hadn’t realised this, so they applied for a judgement.  This is an automatic process – the court had not yet seen the consent order and so a default application for judgement was granted and registered on the County Court Register against her client.

So now we have a tricky situation. A judgement against the nursery owner had been granted and registered, but all the parties involved knew that it wasn’t effective, because an extension had been agreed and applied for. 

The bailiffs are on their way!

However, the court system can be very slow.  Two months later, the nursery owner calls her solicitor in a panic. They have had a call from the County Court Bailiff, who have said that the judgement is outstanding, and they are coming to the premises right now to take ‘walking possession’ – where they identify the items they will take to cover the debt if you don’t pay within five days.  And then they’d actually haul your possessions away.

Our solicitor friend calls  the bailiffs’ office on the number given to the panicky client. They say they have instructions to enforce the judgement despite the fact that both sets of solicitors and the court know the judgement doesn’t stand.

Hang on, I’ll call back, says our solicitor.  She calls the claimant’s lawyer who tells her, no, we’re not trying to enforce, we agreed that the judgement was wrong. She calls the bailiffs again. She gets straight through. The solicitor pauses for thought. Usually, she can never get through to the bailiffs, but on this occasion, she got put straight through.  This is odd. So she pushes back – “I have the documents to show that the judgement has been set aside. You are making a mistake.”

The bailiff replies: “I’ll tell you what – to stop me going round there, you can give me half the amount now and go and check with the court. If the court agrees with you, you can just claim it back from us, but I need paying now. Otherwise I’m going round to your client’s premises and remove the right assets”.

This is also unusual – bailiffs don’t do deals, they don’t haggle. So, to be on the safe side the solicitor sent a colleague to her client’s property to call the police if the bailiffs do actually turn up.

But nobody showed up. And the ‘bailiffs’ were never heard from again.

An easy cash bonus for hackers

This was a sophisticated scam from an outfit that knew a lot about both court procedures and the way bailiffs work. They’d set up a convincing telephone service, and had clearly pulled this scam before. And why not – CCJs are often for thousands of pounds at a time – there’s good money to be had here. And they’re publicly available online.

The only reason they got caught out is because the judgement they’d picked happened to be invalid.

The process, to take walking possession and come and take possession five days later, is the right process. But it will create panic, fear and stress. This serves to cloud judgement and you’re likely to act without thinking or checking carefully (we talk about the ‘amygdala hijack’ in a Psybersafe episode– how your brain responds to perceived threats). So, stop, breathe and take a moment to think things through.

Can you avoid this scam?

What can you do? Always double check the details. Tell the bailiff to turn up and then check all the paperwork. And of course, the best way to avoid this is to make sure clients pay up if a judgement has been made – to the details provided in the court judgement.

If you’re a solicitor confronted with this situation, and you tell your client to pay up – are you then negligent if it turns out to be a scam?

There are many ways that hackers are getting between solicitors, accountants, financial advisers and their clients. You need to protect your firm, your clients and the wider public. 

Psybersafe is particularly useful for professional service clients, where protecting your clients’ private data and financial wellbeing is part of your regulatory requirement.  You may be interested in our blog: Could your law firm survive a cyber attack .

We love behavioural science. We’ve studied it and we know it works. That’s why it’s at the core of our online cyber awareness training. Why not contact us at Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser. to see how we can help your organisation gain better, long-term cyber security habits? 

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Mark Brown is a behavioural science expert with significant experience in inspiring organisational and culture change that lasts.  If you’d like to chat about using Psybersafe in your business to help to stay cyber secure, contact Mark today.