Lawyer Saves $450k By Driving The Extra Miles

// Besides training to make suing your law school a lot easier, lawyers are conditioned to follow paper trails and paperwork. Con Law professors yapping about textualism and Contract profs waxing poetic about the four corners rule can put blinders on the more human elements of the law. And while Zoom has its place, nothing really hits quite like face-to-face communication — especially when a $450k refinancing scam comes your way. From the ABA Journal:

A lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, put the knowledge that he gained at a fall conference to use when he visited a homeowner and averted a financial scam.

[C]harles W. Hands III of the Hands Law Firm and his paralegal Devera Alston, who became suspicious when a man seeking a cash-out refinance was a no-show for a Zoom meeting…Hands and Alston decided that they should visit the property being refinanced and made a 29-mile round trip to the home of Samuel Helmick.

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Surprisingly enough, once they showed up to the house, they met Mr. Helmick. If he wasn’t surprised to see him, he was definitely surprised to find out why they were there — Helmick didn’t have anything to do with the refinancing plan! A scammer managed to get a hold of Helmick’s driver’s license and tax records to pose as him online, but what he really needed to do was wait at the house with a mask on. He would have gotten away with it too, if not for Hands trusting his gut instincts.

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Intuition is supported by a wealth of experience, and Hands has had a hand on financial savviness for years now:

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Take his advice. When it comes to the big stuff, if you can do it in person, do so.

Lawyer Went The Extra 29 Miles To Shut Down Refinance Scam [ABA Journal]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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Scams, Small Law Firms