A cautionary tale for business owners
The following article serves as a cautionary tale for anyone in business. There are many ways that your company can be defrauded. In most cases, these fraud schemes involve fronting money for business opportunities that happen to just fall into your lap. The following story outlines how that exact scenario defrauded a company called MX Properties out of over $1 million dollars.
Last year, the executives at MX Properties were introduced to an outside consultant named John Diak. Mr Diak was brought into the organization because of the numerous business opportunities he had access to overseas. This consultant worked with several different companies/entities that were involved in securing financial instruments that would be used in bank to bank lending transactions and looked to be the perfect fit for MX Properties. Unfortunately for them, it did not turn out quite as profitable as they had originally planned.
In order to get involved in this industry, MX Properties was asked to wire transfer a sum of $1 million dollars to various banks to help get the ball rolling on several different projects. The money was to be deposited into various bank accounts in order to begin the process of establishing a line of credit with these banks. The initial deposits would then be returned to MX Properties while the line of credit would be used to secure the financial instruments to be traded. Everything was going right as planned until MX Properties realized that no money had been released for project funding and their initial investments weren't being returned.
The executives at MX Properties made many attempts to contact their main points of contact with the various entities that had been wired money, to no avail. That's when they received a letter from another Diak contact named Carmen de Souza. Carmen de Souza is one of many lawyers in Lisbon Portugal. The letter she sent was a demand letter that stated that in order to receive the project funding they had been promised, MX Properties would need to wire an additional $11,000 to cover various fees which were not disclosed in any of the original agreements nor were they outlined with any detail in the letter. Of course, the executives at MX Properties were skeptical of the letter since they had p0aid so much money out over the weeks preceding it without any return.
It was only after receiving written confirmation that project funding would be immediately released from Carmen de Souza herself in Lisbon Portugal and accepting her position as a legal professional did MX Properties agree to wire the additional funds. And, as you might expect, not only were the original funds not released, but the fees also disappeared, leaving MX Properties to wonder what just happened.
Unfortunately, this tale can be told by many companies all across the globe. The key to avoiding such a tragedy in your own business is to make sure you know who you are doing business with.
Last year, the executives at MX Properties were introduced to an outside consultant named John Diak. Mr Diak was brought into the organization because of the numerous business opportunities he had access to overseas. This consultant worked with several different companies/entities that were involved in securing financial instruments that would be used in bank to bank lending transactions and looked to be the perfect fit for MX Properties. Unfortunately for them, it did not turn out quite as profitable as they had originally planned.
In order to get involved in this industry, MX Properties was asked to wire transfer a sum of $1 million dollars to various banks to help get the ball rolling on several different projects. The money was to be deposited into various bank accounts in order to begin the process of establishing a line of credit with these banks. The initial deposits would then be returned to MX Properties while the line of credit would be used to secure the financial instruments to be traded. Everything was going right as planned until MX Properties realized that no money had been released for project funding and their initial investments weren't being returned.
The executives at MX Properties made many attempts to contact their main points of contact with the various entities that had been wired money, to no avail. That's when they received a letter from another Diak contact named Carmen de Souza. Carmen de Souza is one of many lawyers in Lisbon Portugal. The letter she sent was a demand letter that stated that in order to receive the project funding they had been promised, MX Properties would need to wire an additional $11,000 to cover various fees which were not disclosed in any of the original agreements nor were they outlined with any detail in the letter. Of course, the executives at MX Properties were skeptical of the letter since they had p0aid so much money out over the weeks preceding it without any return.
It was only after receiving written confirmation that project funding would be immediately released from Carmen de Souza herself in Lisbon Portugal and accepting her position as a legal professional did MX Properties agree to wire the additional funds. And, as you might expect, not only were the original funds not released, but the fees also disappeared, leaving MX Properties to wonder what just happened.
Unfortunately, this tale can be told by many companies all across the globe. The key to avoiding such a tragedy in your own business is to make sure you know who you are doing business with.
Beware if you receive a letter from a Lisbon Portugal lawyer named Carmen de Souza. There are many legitimate lawyers in Lisbon but we would urge caution with this one.
