A screenshot from the Morris James Solicitors website, which is unaffiliated with Delaware-based U.S. firm Morris James.Cyber Scammers Target US Law Firm, Faking UK Affiliation
Delaware-based Morris James warned this week that a website borrowing real details about the firm was thoroughly phony.
August 02, 2019 at 02:14 PM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Delaware Law Weekly
A midsize U.S. law firm based in Delaware has found that its name is being used by a website claiming to belong to a group of solicitors in the United Kingdom affiliated with the Delaware firm.
The problem is, there is no such group.
The U.S. firm, Morris James, posted a notification on its own website and social media on Thursday warning that the website www.morrisjamessolicitors.com "is NOT associated with Morris James LLP".
In its announcement, the law firm said it has reported the website to the FBI, the Action Fraud team of the U.K. police and the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the U.K. Morris James is also "taking steps with the website host to persuade them to take down the website", the firm said.
Morris James declined to comment further on the incident.
The solicitors site uses logos and coloring similar to Morris James' branding, and it makes a reference to the real firm's main office in Delaware.
However, Morris James noted, the phone numbers listed on the site will not connect a caller with any of the firm's U.S. offices, and no one answering those lines will be a representative to the firm.
The imposter website says Morris James Solicitors has an office at 1 Waterhouse Square, 138 Holborn in London, which appears to be the site of a WeWork shared office space. A call to the Delaware phone number listed on the imposter site leads to a message stating, "the phone number you have dialled is unreachable".
According to GoDaddy.com's WHOIS database, the imposter site's domain is registered to Shinjiru Technology Sdn Bhd, which appears to be a Malaysian web hosting entity.
Morris James' situation is reminiscent of other instances of law firm or lawyer identity theft in recent years.
In 2017, the photos of lawyers from Brydon Swearengen & England in Missouri were used to create a website for a fake firm called Wesley & McCain. The phoney firm's website also listed the address of actual Pittsburgh law firm Robb Leonard Mulvihill as its own street address.
A Houston lawyer for Jackson Walker found in 2017 that his headshot appeared on the website of a fictitious firm, Walsh & Padilla.
Preventing such theft is virtually impossible, privacy experts have said, given that the entire purpose of a website is to disseminate useful information about the firm. The problem arises when that information is used improperly.
But unlike other businesses that engage in e-commerce, law firms usually do not collect payment information on their websites. So establishing the motives of such a hack can be difficult.
In the Wesley & McCain instance, the fake firm was found out because it sent a letter to Amazon.com alleging that it was selling a patent-infringing product.
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