A recent costly ruling against a Johannesburg property buyer has highlighted the danger South Africans should be aware of when making online payments to bank accounts provided via email.a High Court order in favour of the buyer — Judith Hawarden — who had won a case against legal firm Edward Nathan Sonnebergs over a 2019 payment which cost her R5.5 million.
She initially won a case against the law firm in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg in 2023, which found that ENS had a legal duty of care to its clients. If the SCA had ruled in Hawarden’s favour, it would have led to creditors being legally obliged to protect their customers’ accounts from getting hacked.
Whatever their method, the fraudsters deleted correspondence with ENS providing its actual bank account details and replaced it with their own. The South African Banking Risk Information Centre provides several indications that your email address might have been compromised, including:Receiving large numbers of undeliverable or bounce messages for emails you did not sendTo further protect yourself from falling for a business email compromise scam, you should verify the bank account details of the company you are paying through multiple official channels.
In such cases, a court might also find the creditor liable for failing to protect its systems appropriately, and the victim could be entitled to compensation.Make sure your PC has the latest operating system updates and antivirus or anti-malware software.