It seems so simple:
Your real estate agent sends you an email and asks you to send money to an account. You were expecting it—it was time for the down payment or to send the needed funds to close the transaction.
Cybercriminals are Monitoring:
But what you didn’t know was that a sophisticated cybercriminal, faked an email because they knew you were ready to buy a house. Maybe they saw a Facebook post you made or hacked someone’s computer system, but they knew you were ready to send money.
Wire Fraud is Initiated:
Real estate wire fraud is a sophisticated scam targeting individuals performing wire transfer payments. Often, emails will be a letter off, or similarly misleading, from the actual account and request the wire transfer. As an example, an email from Bank 101 was sent from jane.doe@bank701 instead of jane.doe@bank101.
Unknowingly, targets will then send wire transfers to the criminal’s account.
These criminals rely on trust. They know you trust your real estate agent, your lawyer or the bank, and they exploit that trust to steal from you.
Suspicious Business Emails Increase, Survey Shows
American Land Title Association
Help Desk: How to Protect Yourself from Real Estate Fraud
The Boston Globe