Fox News Flash top entertainment headlines for March 3
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Things have worked out for “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran after she was the victim of an email phishing scam.
The 70-year-old mogul’s money has been returned to her after her company was tricked out of nearly $400,000 by a clever scheme that saw the criminals pose as her assistant via email.
“I’m thrilled!” the star told Fox News in a statement. “I had already accepted it and moved on. Everyone told me I wouldn’t get the money back and it just seems unbelievable!”
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At the time, Corcoran was told that it was very unlikely that anyone would be able to track down the money but it seems she was able to get ahead of the scammers before they finalized their nefarious bank transaction.
“The money was wired through a German bank on the way to the scammer’s Chinese account. But my bank put pressure on the German bank and they froze the money, giving us time to prove it was fraud,” she explained. “I really thought it was a goner!”
The incident started when the mogul’s bookkeeper received an email about an invoice to approve a payment on a real estate renovation, which isn’t at all uncommon given how many real estate deals she works with on a daily basis. However, this one wasn’t legitimate.
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“I lost the $388,700 as a result of a fake email chain sent to my company,” Corcoran told People at the time. “It was an invoice supposedly sent by my assistant to my bookkeeper approving the payment for a real estate renovation. There was no reason to be suspicious as I invest in a lot of real estate.”
'Shark Tank' star Barbara Corcoran confirmed that she got back the money that was taken in an email phishing scam. (Raymond Hall/GC Images)
The bookkeeper continued to correspond with the scammer, thinking it was the “Shark Tank” star’s assistant thanks to a clever deception involving the name of Corcoran’s actual assistant.
"The money was wired to the scammer yesterday and my bookkeeper copied my assistant, who was shocked to see her name on the correspondence. The detail that no one caught was that my assistant’s email address was misspelled by one letter, making it the fake email address set up by the scammers,” she explained.
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It wasn’t until the bookkeeper sent a followup on the transaction to the actual assistant that they realized they’d been had. Unfortunately, by the time they realized what was going on, the scammer had already made off with the money that was mistakenly wired to them.
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