The 83-year-old aunt of a Morgantown businessman is fighting a court order to pay a $212,500 settlement with United Bank after the original wire transfer was stolen by a scammer.
The money was sent after United Bank and Betty Parmer agreed to the payment to cover attorney costs for a previous case over a $2.5 million defaulted loan, which Parmer lost, according to court documents.
Parmer took that loan after she was fraudulently induced to buy the assets of Secure US, duped into signing over the company management to her nephew, Mitch Brozik, through MB Security, and denied access to her assets.
In December 2015, a jury awarded Parmer a $1.7 million judgment against Brozik.
Parmer’s attorney, Sean Murphy, sent an email requesting the wire transfer details to the attorneys for United Bank, Shawn George and Mike Benniger, on April 11.
About an hour and a half later, George replied and said he would get the details and send them.
That afternoon, someone using an identical email address to George’s sent wire instructions to Murphy directing him to send the money to a Chase Bank in Greenville, Texas. CB Ventures was listed as the beneficiary.
Court documents show Murphy gave those details to Parmer’s Bank, Fulton Bank in Harrisburg, Pa., which then wired the money on April 15.
At the Aug. 8 hearing, when Judge Susan Tucker ordered the payment be sent again, George said he wasn’t aware he replied to “murphyislaw43@gmail.com” rather than “murphyslaw43@gmail.com,” one of Murphy’s actual email addresses.
“So, a fraudster, after Mr. Murphy initiated the request for a wire, at some point unknown at least to us … a fraudster intervened in the email chain, posed as Mr. Murphy requesting the wire instructions,” George said in court documents. “I hit reply to that address, not picking up that there was an ‘i’ between the ‘y’ and the ‘s’ with everything else in the address being identical.”
On May 3, George contacted Murphy and said he hadn’t received the money and the loss was reported to Fulton and Chase banks, as well as the FBI, according to court documents.
Murphy said he believed the instructions were real because George told him he’d get back to him with the details and didn’t just tell him to wire the money to the same account used in a previous payment — the United Bank on Elmer Prince Drive
He also noted the email appeared to come from George’s real email address and he thought the money could be going to an insurance carrier or third-party indemnifier.
Following the Aug. 8 hearing, Murphy asked the state Supreme Court of Appeals to disqualify Tucker from hearing the case. That was denied in a Sept. 19 administrative order signed by Chief Justice Elizabeth Walker.
Murphy also seeks a ruling preventing Tucker from enforcing her Aug. 8 order to Parmer to pay the $212,500.
Murphy argues Tucker exceeded her authority in ordering Parmer to pay the mediation settlement a second time and the responsibility for the missing money is on George, since he actually interacted with the scammer through the fake email account.
The Supreme Court has not ruled on the payment issue, but Tucker and United Bank have responded.
Murphy reported the incident and potential claim to his insurance company, Montana-based ALPS Property & Casualty Insurance Co.
The insurance company claims the policy does not cover this incident and the company should not have to cover or defend Murphy in this incident. A suit seeking a judgment to that effect was filed in the Northern District of West Virginia and that litigation is ongoing.
Contacted Friday, Murphy said he had no comment.
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