A man turned to court to get his missing R1.7m back from a law firm. He said he had entrusted them with his money. File Photo: IOLPretoria – Cybercrime is rife and something attorneys must be aware of; if they by mistake pay money over held by clients in their trust accounts, they cannot hide behind the defence that it is not their fault as the client’s bank account was hacked.
This was the message of Acting Judge Matthew Klein delivered in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, in a case of a Montana businessman who claimed back more than R1.7million held in the trust account of his lawyer following the sale of one of his properties.
The law firm Van der Spuy and De Jongh Inc paid several amounts over to companies and persons, as “per instruction from Fourie”.
The problem was that he never gave these instructions. He only heard of the payments when he spoke to the lawyer about something else and she told him that she did make the payments as requested by him.
A stunned Fourie told lawyer Nicola van der Spuy that he never requested her to make these payments.
Fourie said in papers before the court that the fraud was apparently perpetrated in that the fraudsters had somehow hacked into his email and created the false impression with the law firm that he was sending the instructions.
The money was part of more than R3.9m Fourie left in the trust account of the law firm following the sale of a property. He was looking to buy another property and decided to leave it in the trust account for the time being.
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