LawSoc warns members about bogus law firm

Singapore

THE LAW Society has alerted its members about a group of fraudsters impersonating lawyers to cheat unsuspecting members of the public.

In an e-mail to members on Tuesday, the LawSoc specifically highlighted a bogus entity going by Goh Keng Law Firm, which has cobbled together names and photographs of lawyers practising at genuine law firms on its website.

The fake firm also pinched client reviews and lawyer profiles from real law practices.

"The scammers use the real names and photographs of lawyers from other law practices with the intention to dupe unsuspecting members of the public into thinking they are a legitimate law practice, and ask for a commitment fee from the unsuspecting members of the public before they take on the matter," LawSoc said, describing this as a "live matter". It also set the record straight that there is no such law practice in Singapore.

Among the lawyers named in the website, which is still live at the time of writing, are Keith Hsu, Sharifah Ally and Muhd Shafiuddin Ong from Emerald Law. However, their headshots used on the fake firm's website do not correspond with the ones on Emerald Law's site.

Mr Hsu, who is joint managing partner of the firm, told The Business Times that he was alerted to the scam about a month ago. His colleague lodged a police report on April 7. He also reached out to LawSoc and the Ministry of Law.

"It appears the individuals who created this website just went online to mix and match different lawyers' profiles, and created this website. We tried to investigate their activities by enquiring about their services, and they replied asking for a commitment fee," he said.

The police confirmed that the report had been lodged, but did not respond to BT's queries on the status of its investigation and whether they have received other similar complaints.

Reverse image searches suggest that several of the photographs used by "Goh Keng Law Firm" are stock images from websites like iStock, Adobe Stock and Freepik.

Other lawyers featured on the bogus firm's site include National University of Singapore law professor Eleanor Wong, Remy Choo, director of Peter Choo & Low LLC, Patrick Tan, founder and chief executive of Fortis Law Corporation, and Javern Sim, managing director at Populus Law Corporation.

In its e-mail to members, LawSoc also alluded to other similar cases of scammers targeting law practices. "The Law Society has recently received a number of reports from law practices relating to scammers impersonating lawyers in Singapore to cheat unsuspecting members of the public," it wrote.

In response to BT's queries, a LawSoc spokesperson said it has received "several reports" on Goh Keng Law Firm from law practices, and that it was first alerted on April 27.

She added that LawSoc does not have information on the perpetrators and how many people have been duped thus far.

According to Section 33 of the Legal Profession Act, any unauthorised person who "wilfully or falsely pretends to be, or takes or uses any name, title, addition or description implying that he is duly qualified or authorised to act as an advocate or a solicitor, or that he is recognised by law as so qualified or authorised" can be fined up to S$25,000 and/or jailed up to six months.