Shark Tank judge Barbara Corcoran lost nearly $400,000 in an elaborate email scam that tricked her staff. Corcoran said someone acting as her assistant sent an invoice to her bookkeeper earlier this week for a renovation payment. She told People that she had “no reason to be suspicious” about the email because she invests in real estate, so the bookkeeper wired $388,700 to the email address. The problem was that the email address didn’t belong to her assistant. The scammer imitated her assistant’s email address and misspelled it with one letter. The mistake wasn’t caught until the bookkeeper emailed the assistant’s correct address for a follow-up. Corcoran said the scammer has “disappeared,” and she acknowledged that she wouldn’t be getting her money back.
… Corcoran fell for a phishing scam. It’s common, too: Nearly 30,000 people reported being a victim of that type of scam last year. Together they reported nearly $50 million in losses, according to the FBI’s 2018 Internet Crime Report.
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