Barbara Corcoran built her name through drive, curiosity, and a knack for turning small chances into big wins. Her story began with a modest loan that she used to launch The Corcoran Group.
This grew into one of the most recognized real estate companies in New York City. She became known for reading the market with sharp intuition and for building a business culture that encouraged confidence and bold thinking.
But even titans like her can be deceived now and then. While her story of making $1 million in a day is quite famous, what many don’t know is that she also lost $400,000 in a scam once. Even with decades of experience, Corcoran wasn’t immune to modern cyber threats.
The $400,000 Scam That Fooled Barbara Corcoran
Corcoran’s job on the ABC show is to spot people with real drive, yet she ended up dealing with a scam that caught her team off guard. Her bookkeeper received an email that looked completely authentic.
It appeared to come from Corcoran’s assistant, Emily. The correspondence email mentioned a payment of $388,700 tied to a property project. The twist was that none of the emails came from Emily at all.
The scammers trimmed a single letter from her address, making it look almost identical. Since real estate deals are a normal part of her work, nothing about the request seemed strange at first.
Barbara’s bookkeeper, called Christine, followed up with a few quick questions through email, and everything still looked routine.
Believing the request was legitimate, she sent the money to what she thought was a company based in Germany (called FFH Concept GmbH).
Only later did they realize the message had been crafted by someone trying to impersonate a trusted member of Corcoran’s staff. When the bookkeeper eventually checked in with Corcoran’s actual assistant about the wire transfer, the bitter revelation dawned upon them.
Barbara Corcoran Explains How the Fraud Slipped Through
Barbara has commented on the incident, saying, “I was upset at first, but then remembered it was only money.”
In talks with CNBC Make-It, Barbara added that “Scammers found their way to me in the most clever and simple way. The story was totally plausible because I invest in a lot of real estate and do a lot of renovations for a living.”
The Shark Tank investor further continued saying, “No one reads their email addresses that carefully that you see day in and day out, and the scammers knew it.”
Timely Report Helped Recover the Missing Money
The scammers managed to transfer the funds out of Corcoran’s account, but the timing worked in her favor.
She reported the incident, and her bank in New York spotted the issue and stopped the transfer before it reached the scammers in China. Because of that quick action, the full amount was recovered.
Rising Cost of BEC Attacks Across the United States
The authorities label scams like this as business email compromise or email account compromise. The modus operandi involves a scammer who slips into a company’s email system or creates a near-perfect copy of it. They then send requests that look routine.
The goal is to trick someone inside the business into sending money to an account the scammer controls. The messages often look normal, which is why so many people fall for them.
The FBI reported 23,775 business email compromise cases in its 2019 Internet Crime Report. The losses were around $1.7 billion from the same. The scale of it shows how common and costly these schemes have become.
Corcoran has been clear about the lesson she took from her own scare. She plans to slow down and study details like sender names and email addresses instead of assuming everything is correct at first glance. She says staying alert to small clues can make a big difference.
