Security firm uncovers 150-plus cloned law-firm websites used in coordinated recovery scams

Sygnia's investigation began when a boutique law firm reported multiple impostor sites using its branding; analysis quickly revealed a deliberately engineered ecosystem of more than 150 related domains rather than a few opportunistic knockoffs. The cloned sites are shallow — typically a landing page and one or two supporting pages — but are crafted to appear legitimate and to prey on victims of prior fraud by promising recovery with payment only after restitution. Technical design choices across the cluster underline an operational focus on resilience and evasion: registrations spread across multiple registrars, unique SSL certificates per site, and hosting or fronting through content-delivery and privacy services that complicate fast takedowns. Sygnia identified recurring contact infrastructure, including phone numbers with histories in other scams, indicating long-lived reuse of assets even if attribution to a single actor remains unresolved. While the researchers did not directly observe final monetization steps, they assessed a high likelihood that gathered personal and transactional information would feed downstream fraud, credential stuffing or targeted social-engineering follow-ups. Sygnia situates this campaign within broader shifts in fraud operations: automated phishing toolkits, browser-based session-steering scripts and large infostealer caches circulating on criminal forums supply both the scale and situational context needed to convert site visitors into compromised accounts or payments. Telephone-based social engineering (vishing) and bespoke phishing kits make it easier to shepherd victims through authentication prompts or one-time codes, increasing the chance of account takeover once initial contact details are collected. Defenders can get early wins through routine reconnaissance — reverse-image searches for logos, domain-registration monitoring, and audits for impersonation — but Sygnia and related researchers urge deeper, cross-layer defenses: integrate telephony-fraud indicators, endpoint telemetry and credential-exposure scanning into identity protection workflows; prioritize hardware-backed MFA and session-revocation capabilities; and harden incident response for brand-impersonation events. The campaign underscores the operational advantage criminals gain from treating impersonation as an engineering problem — investing in persistence, reuse and automation — and highlights the growing need for registrars, CDN providers and hosting platforms to speed coordinated abuse responses. Attribution remains difficult because infrastructure is deliberately recycled and obscured; the investigation is ongoing, and Sygnia warns similar structurally resilient scams will proliferate unless industry-wide detection and takedown coordination improves.