Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran has revealed that she lost nearly $400,000 in an email phishing scam.
Corcoran said the incident happened last week when her bookkeeper received an email about an invoice “approving the payment for a real estate renovation.”
“I lost the $388,700 as a result of a fake email chain sent to my company,” Corcoran told People.
“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,” she said.
The bookkeeper continued to communicate with the person who she thought was Corcoran’s assistant and sent a wire payment for the renovation.
The error was noticed once the bookkeeper sent a followup email to Corcoran’s actual assistant. That’s when her assistant realized the scammer had altered her email address.
“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,” Corcoran explained to the outlet.
Corcoran doesn’t expect to get the money back because it had already been withdrawn.
“The scammer disappeared and I’m told that it’s a common practice, and I won’t be getting the money back,” she said. “I was upset at first, but then remembered it was only money.”
Corcoran tweeted about the incident, writing, “Lesson learned: Be careful when you wire money!”