Beware of Scams

Law firms and their clients are frequent targets of fraud. Scammers impersonate lawyers, spoof firm email addresses, and send official-looking notices designed to create urgency. This page describes what Bass PLLC will and will not do, so that anything inconsistent with it can be recognized for what it is.

What Bass PLLC Will Never Do

Bass PLLC will never send you new or changed wire instructions by email without discussing the matter with you first over the phone. It will never ask you to pay by gift card, cryptocurrency, payment app, or courier of cash. It will never demand immediate payment to stop an arrest, a lawsuit, or a filing deadline. It will never ask for your Social Security number, bank login, or account passwords by email or text. And it will never contact you out of the blue claiming you owe money to a client of the firm and pressing you to pay within the hour.

Always Verify Payment Instructions By Phone

Wire fraud aimed at legal matters is common and expensive. A scammer who has compromised an email account will send instructions that look correct in every respect — the right names, the right matter, the right amount — with one detail changed. Before sending any funds in connection with a matter involving this firm, call Bass PLLC at a number you have independently confirmed and verify the instructions with a person. Do not use a phone number contained in the email itself. If instructions change at the last minute, treat that as a warning sign rather than an emergency.

Impersonation of the Firm

The firm’s only website is jakebasslaw.com, and legitimate email from the firm comes from that domain. Fraudulent messages often use a lookalike domain with a letter added, removed, or swapped, or a free email account bearing the firm’s name. Attorney names, bar numbers, and letterhead are public information and are easily copied, so their presence proves nothing. Bar admission can be verified directly through the relevant state’s attorney directory.

Trademark and Patent Solicitation Scams

Anyone who files a trademark or patent application becomes part of a public record and should expect mail and email from private companies with official-sounding names, often demanding payment for registration, renewal, publication in a private registry, or monitoring services. These are solicitations, not government notices, and paying them generally accomplishes nothing. Genuine correspondence from the United States Patent and Trademark Office comes from the uspto.gov domain, and fees are paid only through the USPTO’s own systems. If Bass PLLC handles your trademark application filing, the firm will tell you which deadlines are real. When something arrives that you did not expect, forward it to the firm before paying it.

Note that Bass PLLC does not handle patent filings. For that reason, if you receive correspondence from the firm relating to patent filings, you should consider it to be a scam and let the firm know as soon as possible.

If You Think You Have Been Targeted

Do not reply, click links, or open attachments. Call the firm at a number you already have and ask. If you have already sent money, contact your bank immediately — recovery is sometimes possible in the first hours and rarely possible after that — and report the incident to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, to the Federal Trade Commission at reportfraud.ftc.gov, and to your state attorney general. If someone is impersonating Bass PLLC, the firm would like to know.