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“Shark Tank” judge Barbara Corcoran falls for $400,000 e-mail scam

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A single missing letter in an email address cost Barbara Corcoran nearly $400,000 and almost nobody caught it in time.

The “Shark Tank” investor and real estate mogul was targeted in a business email compromise scheme that fooled her bookkeeper into wiring $388,700.11 to an overseas account. The scam played out entirely over email, using a spoofed address that mimicked her own executive assistant, and it worked because the request looked exactly like the kind of invoice Corcoran pays all the time.

• Corcoran’s bookkeeper, Christine, wired $388,700.11 after receiving what appeared to be a legitimate invoice for a real estate renovation payment tied to a German company called FFH Concept.
• The fraudulent email address impersonated Corcoran’s real assistant, Emily, with just one character altered — a missing “o” — enough to slip past scrutiny.
• The scam unraveled only after the bookkeeper copied the real assistant on the confirmation chain, and Corcoran’s legal team later traced the money to IP addresses and accounts linked to China.

Factors Contributing to Invoice Oversight

The scheme began with an email that looked routine: an invoice referencing a real estate renovation, the kind of payment Corcoran’s office handles regularly. The sender’s address was nearly identical to that of Emily, Corcoran’s actual executive assistant, off by a single missing letter that went unnoticed in the flow of a normal workday.

When Christine, the bookkeeper, wrote back to ask which account should fund the payment, the scammer didn’t go quiet — they answered. According to accounts of the exchange, the cybercriminal engaged in a back-and-forth reply chain designed specifically to look convincing, walking Christine through the details until she authorized the transfer to the overseas account tied to FFH Concept.

The Moment It Fell Apart

The fraud only came to light after the wire had already gone through, when the bookkeeper looped the real Emily into the confirmation thread as a routine follow-up. Emily had no idea what the email chain was referring to, and the mismatch triggered immediate confusion inside Corcoran’s office as staff realized the invoice had never come from her at all.

A single missing letter in an email address was all it took to move $388,700.11 into an account overseas.

By the time the discrepancy surfaced, the funds had already cleared. Corcoran’s legal team moved to trace the destination of the wire, ultimately linking the transaction to IP addresses and accounts connected to China — but recovery, at that point, was a long shot.

Corcoran’s Own Admission

Rather than distance herself from the incident, Corcoran was candid about how close the invoice came to fooling her personally. She acknowledged that because she routinely signs off on large real estate renovation bills, she likely would have approved the payment herself if it had landed in her own inbox instead of her bookkeeper’s.

As of February 27, 2020, Corcoran said she had effectively written off the $388,700.11, treating it as money that was gone for good. The episode lands in the same category of costly, well-disguised email fraud that has hit both corporations and everyday accounts — the kind of scheme documented in cases like the wave of prominent U.S. Twitter account hacks and the ransom-driven breach behind the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, where attackers exploited trust in routine digital communication rather than brute-force hacking.

Corcoran built her fortune spotting scams and bad deals from the other side of the Shark Tank table, and this one still got past her own office over a single dropped letter in an email address. That’s the whole story in one line — the bookkeeper thought she was talking to Emily, and she wasn’t.