'Shark Tank' Star Barbara Corcoran Loses Nearly $400K In Phishing Scam

ABC's "Shark Tank" - Season Eleven

Barbara Corcoran has been scammed out of nearly $400,000.

The Shark Tank star became an unwitting victim to a phishing scheme that targeted her office, PEOPLE has learned. Corcoran told the outlet her bookkeeper received an email last week about an invoice “approving the payment for a real estate renovation,” adding that, she “lost the $388,700 as a result of a fake email chain sent to my company.”

“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,” the 70-year-old businesswoman revealed, which explains why her bookkeeper proceeded to process the wire payment for whom she believed was Corcoran’s assistant. It went through on Tuesday (February 25).

Corcoran’s company didn’t detect the error until her real assistant noticed the hacker 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,” Corcoran explained. “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.”

Per TMZ, the thief pulled off the scam using a legitimate German marketing agency via an IP address in China — but by then, it was too late. “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.”

Photo: Getty Images


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