Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran Victim Of Email Phishing Scam Loses $400k

Source: (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic) / (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran Victim Of Email Phishing Scam, Loses Nearly $400k

Shark Tank is the premier entrepreneurial show on tv, in fact, the amount of knowledge given on the show has helped pave the way for the current and future generations of hopeful businessmen and women. With the amount of knowledge between the host of the show, we are just as surprised as you to learn one of the sharks became a victim of one of the oldest scams in the book. According to TMZ, Shark Tank host Barbara Corcoran was the victim of the age-old email phishing scam and it cost her almost $400k due to her team’s negligence.

“An email chain was forwarded to Barbara’s bookkeeper, a woman named Christine. Folks on Barbara’s team tell us the email appeared to have been sent from Barbara’s executive assistant, Emily … and it informed Christine she had the green light to pay $388,700.11 to a company called FFH Concept GmbH in Germany. The problem is that email didn’t really come from Emily.

The scammers changed Emily’s email address by removing one letter, so they were the ones actually communicating with Christine … who did ask the right questions. For instance, she asked what the money was for, and got an email back saying FFH was designing German apartment units in which Barbara had invested.”

Barbara actually does invest in the real estate and the company they were impersonating is a real company. On Tuesday the bookkeeper delivered the funds to the account listed in the email and decided AFTER THE FACT to email Emily who instantly let her know she was not the one she had been in contact with.

Just that quickly Barbara lost upwards of $400k to one of the oldest scams in the world. Always double-check everything especially when sending out almost half a million dollars and especially from a random email request for it. Somewhere in the world, a criminal is $400k richer all from sending a couple of emails. Barbara has traced where the emails came from and she’s letting her attorneys decide the next step.

Poor Barbara.