Danger, Danger! Wire Fraud Alert
By Jim Palmer Jr.

There is a crisis sweeping through the real estate industry that has continued to grow worse as scammers perfect their evil craft and as the use of technology for real estate transactions has increased.  Such fraud can be totally avoided by taking a few simple precautions.  In the typical real estate wire fraud case, crooks impersonate Realtors® and escrow officers in order to secretly scam buyers out of thousands of dollars.

Here is how it happens; 1) an email is hacked (the brokers, escrow officer or consumer) and the hacker finds out that you have a pending real estate transaction.  2) The sophisticated hacker secretly monitors the account until they ascertain the approximate time that the consumer must wire funds.  3) The hacker instructs the buyer to wire funds immediately, while impersonating the broker or escrow officer.  They create a sense of urgency so the buyer feels obligated to send funds immediately.  These instructions often explain that the broker can’t be reached by phone so any follow up must be done by email.  When the consumer replies to the expertly counterfeited email, the consumer’s email is diverted to the hacker who controls the account.  4) The consumer wires funds which are immediately swept from the account by the hacker, with no recourse for the damaged consumer.

Since most brokers, loan officers and closers routinely advertise their contact information to the public, they are specifically targeted by hackers because of that visibility, and because of the high dollar amounts involved in such transactions.  These professional practitioners understand they are constant targets for these annoying evil-doers and usually take the precaution of alerting clients to the methods of such criminal parasites well ahead of a scheduled closing. 

In a recent case, a scammer successfully diverted a $30,000 earnest money into their own account.  The buyer was left with no other alternative than to write off the loss and replace the looted amount with new funds into the proper account.

 Don’t become one of the statistics that are duped by these weasels!   Real estate buyers and sellers can avoid such fraud by taking two simple steps:  1) Obtain the phone number of your real estate broker and your escrow agent at your first meeting.  2) Call the known phone number to speak directly with your broker or escrow officer to confirm wire instructions PRIOR to wiring.    Do not rely upon e-mail communications.

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