Joliet's Rambo, BMO Harris Sued After Home Buyer Loses $73K To Hacker

When it comes to buying a house, Marissa Ritter experienced the horror of horrors. This year, Ritter intended to buy a three-bedroom ranch in Monee for $87,500. Her real estate lawyer was John E. Rambo of Joliet. On May 8, she went to the BMO Harris Bank in New Lenox to conduct a wire transfer of $73,401. The wire transfer, however, was a complete scam. Ritter's $73,401 money wire got diverted to Canada, and where it went from there remains undetermined. The FBI's investigating the crime. This month, a Mokena law firm filed a civil lawsuit at the Will County Courthouse against the Joliet lawyer for legal malpractice and common law negligence involving cyber security. BMO Harris Bank is being sued for negligence.

Ritter's lawsuit seeks more than $50,000 in damages from each of the co-defendants, plus attorneys fees. She is being represented by the Mokena law firm of Bruggeman, Hurst & Associates on Wolf Road.

Messages left with BMO Harris bank representatives at their New Lenox branch were not returned. Rambo declined to comment when contacted by Joliet Patch last week.According to his law firm bio, Rambo is a Joliet native who has practiced law in Will County since 1993 and been in a solo practice the past 20 years. He focuses on personal injury, workers compensation, real estate, criminal and traffic, family law and divorce, according to his law office website.

On May 8, Ritter received multiple emails that she thought were from her realtor. "In fact, the emails ... instead originated off shore, from unidentified individuals who were operating a wire fraud scam. The emails contained a settlement statement, wiring instructions and requested that Marissa wire money immediately to fund the closing," her lawsuit stated. (For more information on this and other Joliet Patch neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive free daily newsletters and free breaking news alerts.)

That day, she went to the New Lenox BMO Harris branch, meeting with Belinda Frazier, a relationship banker, the lawsuit states. "As indicated in the email and the wire transfer form, the beneficiary was not listed as Attorneys' Title Guaranty Fund, but instead the beneficiary was listed as 'GS Trade Group, Inc.' of Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Personnel at BMO Harris Bank were aware that a wire transfer for a south suburban residential real estate closing through Attorneys' Title Guaranty Fund would never be sent to a trading company in Mount Laurel, New Jersey."

The lawsuit states that George St. Marie, the BMO Harris branch manager, tried to contact Ritter's lawyer, John Rambo, to verify the wire transfer instructions. He left Rambo two voice mail messages on May 8-9.

"Had BMO Harris Bank waited until it made contact with Mr. Rambo before it sent the wire transfer, then it would have learned that the instructions were fraudulent," the lawsuit contends.

Ritter, it turned out, got an email that she presumed came from her attorney urging her to "kindly have your bank go ahead with the wire. As the beneficiary is correct. The beneficiary name is GS Trade Group Inc. Confirm to your bank everything is fine. I have a flight to catch to Illinois."

But that email was not sent by attorney John Rambo.

You see, his email at his Joliet law firm had been hacked, the lawsuit states. "Unbeknownst to Marissa ... she was actually corresponding with the hacker," the lawsuit pointed out. "Attorney Rambo did have a flight to catch which, of course, the hacker knew because he had been reading attorney Rambo's emails for weeks."

According to the lawsuit, BMO Harris then relied upon the fraudulent email from Rambo's account and conducted the wire transfer, which has left Ritter out $73,401.08. The money wire went to New Jersey. Then it got redirected to Canada and "from there it was redirected to an unknown location," the suit states. "Marissa's money has not been recovered."

Ritter, her lawsuit notes, later hired a firm to conduct a rigorous forensic analysis of the fraudulent emails in hopes of rectifying the problem and discovering the culprit.

"Based on the forensic analysis, attorney John Rambo failed to use a secure email for office and client communications. Mr. Rambo's email ... had been compromised in two breaches."

Rambo's password that he was using, Skeeter 112, the lawsuit states, was compromised and that let the hacker log into the Joliet lawyer's email, monitor his privileged legal client communications and also correspond with Ritter "as though the hacker was John Rambo himself," the lawsuit wrote.

On May 31, Rambo let IT specialists with Codilis and Associates review his email account, the lawsuit noted. "It was quickly determined that he was the security breach and it had occurred at least a month before Marissa was defrauded. Attorney Rambo admitted to Codilis that he had observed many discrepancies in his email account including emails not initiated by him appearing in his 'Sent' folder and emails sent to him disappearing from his 'Inbox.'"

The lawsuit states that attorney Rambo "owed his client, Marissa Ritter, a duty to use such skill, prudence and diligence as members of the legal profession commonly possess and exercise in providing legal services to Plaintiff ... It is no longer sufficient for an attorney to simply create a public email account and then start sending privileged correspondence and ignore the consequences."

Image of Linden Avenue home in Monee via Realtor.com

Image of lawsuit via Joliet Patch Editor John Ferak