A few of our clients have reported suspicious emails from someone posing as David Gaynes. LPL Financial’s Advisor Security Operations Team has deemed the emails a gift card scam. The context of the email is false, and the impostors are using a standard template. Usually these can be distinguished by the actual email being used to send the original message (mostly from a free 3rd party email domain), as it will normally be something completely unassociated with the person being impersonated. LPL has email prevention and detection in place, and they are continuously working with their security providers to minimize the exposure to their advisors when new threats are identified. Unfortunately, given the right conditions, anyone can send emails in anyone’s name and there is nothing anyone can do about it in these circumstances other than verifying the sender if the request involves opening an attachment or payment request. LPL has advised that if this were a data breach issue, the scope of the attack would not be like this, but more damaging.
The emails are being sent from another email domain and do not include our standard signature line. Our email domain is “intfingroup.com”. Our emails include a signature line with our address and telephone numbers. Please be vigilant when opening any email, especially those with attachments. When in doubt, please contact one of our team members to confirm the legitimacy of the email.
Thank you for your business.
