From the Principal’s Desk – Fabbro Talks (May 2023)
Welcome to the May edition of our Newsletter.
April was an exciting month in Adelaide with fantastic weather coupled with some big events taking place in the city.
The AFL Gather Round was well received and created a real ‘buzz’ around the city from the Thursday night through to the weekend. This was then followed by the inaugural Adelaide LIV golf tournament at the Grange Golf course. Both events were very well supported by spectators and certainly made South Australia a focus nationally and internationally.
Last week an AFL player came out publicly to tell his story of how he was scammed out of his life savings. It is devastating the amount of online and cyber frauds that are taking place routinely in our modern society.
We have been involved in, and are aware of, a number of matters involving emails being hacked and bank account details being changed such that a payment is directed to a fraudster’s bank account rather than the account intended.
Given we are routinely handling other people’s money through our trust account we are extraordinarily cautious to ensure payments are directed to the correct account.
We have even seen an email from a car dealership be intercepted and the attached PDF invoice for the vehicle be changed by inserting different bank account details to where the invoice payment should be made.
You should never trust email or SMS communication of bank account details without checking the accuracy of those details either verbally with the intended recipient or alternatively, by simply transferring one dollar to the account advised; you should then ring and check that it has been received before transferring the balance.
The sophistication of these frauds is frightening, and you should always err on the side of caution when someone is advising you that your accounts have been compromised or similar.
In this month’s newsletter we provide a short article on some steps business owners can consider to improve their cyber-safety. We also look at the defamation settlement of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox media and provide an article on the nature and effect of guarantees in the banking and finance world.
We have the Federal Budget to look forward to in the month of May and hopefully plenty of rain to provide a good kickstart to the season for our farmers.
I trust all our valued clients past and present, enjoy a healthy and successful month of May and as always if you are in need of any assistance in matters legal … we’re here to help!
For information on the range of legal advice and services that we provide, head to:
Michael Fabbro
Practice Principal
Ezra Legal
