You understand how important it is to maintain a good professional reputation, particularly if you serve a rotation of clients or customers in a capacity like a real estate agent. If your profile is high enough, you might become the target of a fraudster who will try to impersonate you to acquire money from your clients.
For example, you may find out from one of your clients that you had sent an email requesting a payment. However, you know you sent no such email. A white-collar criminal may have impersonated you by using one of a number of methods.
Fraudsters may hack your computer
Some criminals will try to hack your email. They could send you a phishing email that contains an urgent notice that an account you own is going to close down unless you confirm your financial or personal information. The email will likely give you an online link to enter in your information which will go back to the fraudster.
There are many ways white-collar criminals could use your information. They may gain control of your email and use it to send messages. They might hack your computer directly and monitor your activities. Some fraudsters will try to gain control of your financial accounts. Even if you avoid a phishing or hacking attempt, scammers have another way to acquire your identity.
Fraudsters may spoof your email
According to an article in Forbes, fraudsters operating in the real estate market sometimes trick home buyers by sending emails that purport to be from agents or other parties important to a sale. The emails may contain the right names and the right formatting. Even the email address looks correct unless you look closely. You can often tell a spoof email by whether it has one character different from the real email address.
Spoofing your email does not require a fraudster to hack your computer. As Forbes explains, criminals can look on public information sites to acquire email addresses or other information to help set up a spoof email account. White collar criminals can target the identities of anyone from entrepreneurs to financial institutions to real estate agents. This could lead to an unfortunate situation where you have to defend your good name from white collar criminal charges.
