{"id":1593,"date":"2008-06-18T13:15:31","date_gmt":"2008-06-18T19:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2012-01-02T10:45:58","modified_gmt":"2012-01-02T16:45:58","slug":"does-this-sound-legitimate-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/does-this-sound-legitimate-to-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Does This Sound Legitimate to You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I got an email from a marketing firm that specializes in helping CPA firms market their services. The sender of the email was inquiring about whether I charge hourly or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/2008\/06\/14\/fixed-fees-im-not-a-fast-food-joint\/\">fixed fees<\/a>, and what my hourly rates are. He said his client, a CPA firm didn&#8217;t want him to mention their name.<\/p>\n<p>I thought this a bit odd. After all, why would I give this kind of confidential information to a marketing firm for use by their CPA firm client? The sender replied that the CPA firm had a potential fraud case to refer out and &#8220;&#8230; they want to size the fees.&#8221; And that he would go &#8220;elsewhere&#8221; if I wasn&#8217;t interested.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My response:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019ve never heard of a CPA firm referring a case out via their marketing firm. This just doesn\u2019t pass the smell test for me. I\u2019d be happy to talk with the firm directly, otherwise, I\u2019ll have to pass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What do you think? Was the email a legitimate request based upon a case that needs to be referred out? Or was it a marketing professional making up a story to get confidential data that may help his client?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I got an email from a marketing firm that specializes in helping CPA firms market their services. The sender of the email was inquiring about whether I charge hourly or fixed fees, and what my hourly rates are. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-pH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}