One of the downsides of being a well-known business that is respected in the community is that scammers like to glom on to our good name and cheat people out of money. Recently, we learned that someone using a social media platform (LinkedIn) is impersonating a Grossman Law Offices employee in an attempt to scam people. Before I get into the details, let me be clear no one at Grossman Law Offices will ever ask anyone for money. If someone does, do not give them anything and hang up.
"Naomi Llanes" Has No Affiliation with Grossman Law Offices
A LinkedIn profile under the name "Naomi Llanes" has been contacting people and pretending to be an employee of Grossman Law Offices. From what we've been able to gather, the person then attempts to get the person they're targeting to provide them with money for help with a legal matter or work on their case.
Grossman Law Offices does not take money from clients or the general public ever. Grossman Law Offices pays all the fees associated with our cases from our own funds and only receives repayment after a case is over. Even that money comes from the defendants directly or from their insurer—never a client. Long story short, unless the firm sues you, there is absolutely no reason to give us money.
How Was Someone Able to Pull off This Scam?
From what we've been able to gather, it appears this person just grabbed the firm's logo from the web and put it in their profile. LinkedIn has no safeguards in place that would have alerted anyone on our end to this ahead of time or allowed us to stop it. In fact, the whole reason we're alerting the public to this scam online is because we're at the mercy of LinkedIn to have the account removed. If there was anything more that we could do beyond reporting the matter to LinkedIn and watching that report disappear into the void, we certainly would.
When in Doubt, Hang Up and Call Us
We recognize that these kinds of scams rely on the scammer gaining your confidence. We all tell ourselves that we'll never be taken in, but scammers would be off doing something productive if they weren't so good at tricking people. Their whole goal is to make you feel uncomfortable saying no to them and hanging up. If you find yourself in that situation, then tell whoever is calling you that you'll call them back, then reach out to us at (214) 220-9191. We'll be happy to clear up the situation (and we'll never ask for money).