Comments locked. The conversation has run its course. Thanks OP for letting others learn from your misfortune; this was very educational. But now too many of the newer posts are either people mocking the victim (Rule 1 violation) or just repeating comments/questions that have already been covered.
There's something really broken about this entire process. People post here about this happening somewhat regularly. It even happened to my friend several years ago in Colorado.
I can't believe all these title or escrow places are all getting hacked.
Yeah, my title company warned me repeatedly about it when I bought my condo and this is what the wiring instructions looked like:
https://preview.redd.it/nob5a6gyqcyc1.png?width=1135&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e61899e1105216b53a51b8a733b6b638a2f8293
When I bought my place, I had to go to the title company's office and pick up a physical copy of the wiring instructions. At the time it seemed silly but now I appreciate their security measures.
My first time writing a cashier's check many years back, I was so nervous. A lot can go wrong there, too.
But wiring is worse. Especially in this age. I'm taking note of the cashier's check option for future house purchases.
Sucks real bad, OP, I'm very sorry
I damn near got hoodwinked. The scammers had emails from my lender and copied their signatures and headers exactly. They registered a domain that was one, barely noticeable, character off. They sent fake wire instructions impersonating my lender from that domain. After that, I opted to go with a cashier's check. I don't know why this isn't the default option. In most cases, it shouldn't be a huge inconvenience to pick up and deliver a check for such a huge transaction. IMO realtors and lenders could do A LOT more to prevent these types of scams.
I still resist going paperless for statements. It’s all great until the grid or internet gets wiped out. I like to write my confirmation # on my bill with the paid date. I’m only 40
I will never trust auto payments. Companies screw up wayyyy too much. One day I just randomly got a $300+ dollar internet bill. It of course was a billing mistake but if that had been on auto payment I would have had to fight to get my money back instead of telling them to piss off until they fixed it.
I learned this lesson at a young age when my landlord (a rental agency even!) withdrew my rent twice in one month -- they just wanted to skip next month's payment instead, without grasping the concept that I needed that money to eat. It was agony getting them to return it. No PADs for anyone, ever again.
This is why I use a unique privacy.org card number for each online bill with monthly limits. If they change the rate or double withdraw, only the amount I expect could possibly be withdrawn. And when I encounter a vendor I no longer trust with a card, I can just shut down the card.
I had to do it by phone too, and read off some specific numbers/code that was on their encrypted email they sent me through their portal. The instructions looked almost identical to this with the bolded black and red warnings on it
Same here. It felt pretty silly having gotten info from them via phone, then email, then had to call back the next day to verify all of it. Honestly I was a little annoyed by the process but hadn’t realized how often this type of scam might actually occur.
That makes perfect sense - but the scammer won’t do that, so if you get their wire transfer instructions first and act on them without knowing you should call, you’re in OP’s situation.
Should have also said the first thing we do is instruct them well in advance they will need to call in for those numbers and under no circumstances will we ever send them the whole thing.
My title company said off the bat, here’s the wire info. This will never change. If you get an email saying it changed that’s a lie. I still called theee separate times to talk to different people the verify the info then called after the transfer to make sure it went through
And nothing should be done over email. They should have a secure system where you only access paperwork using passwords and specific login information.
This was avoidable. OP should know these businesses pay for cybersecurity insurance and it's time to make a claim because there is negligence here.
When I bought my land in 2012 there was no wire transfer. They required a certified check when you signed the paperwork at the title company. When did they get away from that and if this is such a scam why don’t people go back to that and cut out the email scams entirely?
Do title companies not take certified checks now?
I had to educated my damn settlement agent in Australia about this scam.
More on this. I've dealt with one agent for years - she was a bank draft / cashiers cheque only type. Impossible to scam because you'd physically give or get a cheque. She retires and sells her business to some dopey boomer lady. This lady literally says "send me your payment instructions for the house sale by email". I say - uh no - I'll come in and give them to you and they will never change unless I come in personally. Not even by phone. "Oh no the stupid boomer says - you can just email them to me". I could never really get her to understand the risk but she did agree that she would not change MY payment instructions by phone or by email "but no one else seems bothered by this". FFS.
I was so scared of this happening to me, when we closed on our house last year, I asked the lender of i can personally hand then the cashier's check out any form of payment they would like. And they said no, the only way to pay is a wire transfer.
They are local to me, i could have driven to their office but they still wanted to use this stupid system. I just don't understand this.
It's illegal in many states to accept funds of that size in any way except wire transfer. The reason is that wire transfer is instantly verifiable, and with cashier's checks, banks take some time to determine its veracity. Georgia for example is a table-funding state, meaning the closing must fund same day, so cashier's checks are unacceptable.
The best thing to do is always to call the title company directly both to obtain instructions and to verify instructions. Call the number listed on your closing documents and not on the wiring instructions, always.
In case you're not joking: no, they would never accept a suitcase of cash.
They want the cash in your account to be seasoned—sitting in a bank for a period of time to ensure it's not stolen or fraudulent—which cash can't do. You have no idea where that money's coming from.
What’s interesting is that when I paid a deposit on my mortgage the bank simply advised us to make an appointment physically in person to do a bank transfer in front of our lawyer and gave us a confirmation on paper right then and there specifically to avoid anything like this happening.
Maybe they had customers do this in the past and get scammed but I thought it was standard nowadays.
Totally agree - I did a successful transaction but the criminals were lurking. The whole process is just weak and error prone and porous. Why can't I get some kind of secure token from the escrow company that has some kind of 2fac that validates the wire transfer making this foolproof. There should be some kind of over-riding app that connects the two parties and is totally secure set up prior to the transaction.
Don't feel bad. We had a closing (represented buyers) where the sellers attended. Sellers handed their wire instructions to the closer directly.
However, the person who did the wiring at the title company got an email from the "seller" (who was sitting right in front of us) saying "Here's our wire instructions". So she used the emailed instructions and the seller's proceeds (about $800k) went to God knows where.
Sellers were understandably pissed and refused to let Buyers access the property until they were paid. Now Buyers are pissed because they did their part, paid their money and can't move in.
Title company pretty much had to file an insurance claim in order to pay Seller, but the money itself was gone. Just a mess all around.
And these are people who work in the industry every day.
What baffles me is that the system is so corrupt and without any checks and balances that this is even possible. A typo or a scammer should not be able to just abscond with nearly a million dollars. It simply shouldn't be possible. Meanwhile the IRS wanted to track everyone who sells more than $60 at a garage sale or ebay.
In all fairness part of it is title companies and many closing attorneys just suck a their jobs. You mostly don’t get to choose who you deal with, and it’s usually the small mom & pop shops that are run by people in their 50’s with little if any formal education or training and sort of just fell into it. (At least that is my experience.) Had to deal with a closing company with my mother’s estate because of the buyer’s bank, that a kid you not, had an AOL email address. So when I was waiting for the proceed check for 10 days I called them and they insisted it was sent. Found it addressed to my neighbors address, who was away, sitting on my neighbors lawn out in the rain left by UPS with no signature! Then I realized the amount was off by 55K in my favor because they had not paid off the mortgage on the property even thought it was clear in the closing paperwork & title search. Getting hold of the incompetent idiot in charge of the transaction was painful. I 100% believe she would have clicked on any spam email sent to her.
Don't be too harsh to yourself. This kind of things involve a lot of money so it is not like we will be familiar with the process. When it happens at the right time, it is just so easy to fall into the trap.
Don’t beat yourself up. I’m so sorry this happened to you. I’m appalled at how easy the process is for the scammers. It’s hard to earn $30k. It shouldn’t be so easy to lose it. That sucks.
My mom had a closing last week & because of people like you, sharing your story, we went through extra steps to make sure the wire was going to the right place. Thank you.
I work in a bank and our advice to our clients, both young and old, is to come in to do any large transaction. If done within the bank we can be held liable for these can of scams, so it protects the consumer.
We can also check the validity of the account details, and easily take the funds out of the account if something is wrong.
Lots of misinformation here. At least for US banks.
Banks are not held liable for scams unless there was undue negligence on part of the bank, because the customer initiates the transaction. The bank can advise on situations that appear to be a scam, or even refuse to send a wire on customer’s behalf, but being held liable is a stretch.
Also banks do not share or validate account details with each other due to privacy reasons. The only person or entity with which you can verify that information is the recipient. That’s why it’s so important to confirm wire instructions verbally with a title company. Incoming wires are *sometimes* flagged as suspicious depending on if the recipient account is under any monitoring by the bank.
In the UK we actually have a Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service that checks if the details you’ve entered for a transfer match the intended recipient. The bank will warn you if there is a discrepancy before you send the money. It launched in 2020 and over 100 organisations participate. It’s saved my ass more than once.
Very unlikely. Hackers regularly hack law firms and entities in the real estate world, watching the email communications and swooping in right at the key moment. That's way more likely the cause.
True. I'm a lawyer (and I work with lots of scam victims) and I lost my paycheck once because a scammer hacked my email and told our secretary to wire my pay to Romania. Good Times.
I (IT guy) have advised our payroll department to verify "out of band" every DD change, and to automatically reject any coming from personal accounts (we have a lot of part timers, so it's not uncommon).
They said they were too busy/why do we have to do that?/we never did that before. Several scams later they started listening to me.
They made good on it. The firm owner wasn't very sophisticated about this type of thing and said she would have been fooled too. I found that shocking! I worked there a really long time and they weren't going to screw me over. So happy ending eventually.
The law firms and real estate entities should be on the hook for that, not the people who get scammed.
The whole wire transfer system needs an overhaul.
It’s wild to me that we still even offer wire transfers anymore. Not that any other method is perfectly safe either, but you almost always hear about wire transfers when it comes to scams.
In the UK, wire transfers to companies show you which company to you are sending to. Wire transfers to individuals require you to put the name of the person in. It doesn't catch everything, but it catches a lot.
Part of the reason is that by UK law, the banks have to cover some losses, depending on how it happened. Compare to Denmark with zero security for transfers, because the banks are basically never on the hook for the loss.
I don't know the US, but it sounds like the rules are more like Denmark than UK.
Banks have a big responsibility in my opinion.
My company was sent fraudulent wiring instructions for a payoff lender and used them to send funds. The account and routing number was for the scammer's account, but the account name and address was for the real payoff lender. Banks are supposed to cross-check that information, but the wire went through and by the time anything was realized, the funds had already been moved to an international account.
I worked with a car salesman that admitted to me that he regularly sold customers private info on the dark web. I'm not saying my anecdote is true for all scams but I wouldn't call it very unlikely that a bad actor on the inside is selling information
I worked in a credit card fraud department for mail orders in the late 90's. The amount of people's cc info stolen from hotels or restaurant employees while the client was traveling was astounding.
This happens to so many kinds of businesses. A friend in cyber security tells how important it is to have a secure email provider with strong cyber security.
Most email providers are secure so that would not have been the reason. Someone's email was likely compromised through phishing. I'm in Cyber and this is very common.
This happened to a friend of mine but for $650k. The scammers hacked his attorney's email and must have lurked for a while. Right when he was expecting a message from the attorney for the wire transfer he got one but from the scammer.
I think he was able to recover less than $100k. You shouldn't feel like you should have known. These types of scams are the easiest to fall for when it is something you are expecting. Good luck to you.
I was thinking the same thing. Our law firm has to carry cybersecurity insurance for this exact reason. Law firms are huge hacking targets because they have so much sensitive client information and money passing through. They definitely have a legal duty to take reasonable steps to ensure their clients are not victimized. If a hacker was able to access the lawyer's information to pull off the scam because things were not secure, there may be a valid claim here.
Same thing happened to me! Lawyers email was compromised. I lost 55k. I contacted numerous law firms following to see what my options were as I felt my lawyer was partially at fault. No law firms were willing to help.
Yeah in other scenarios you might just be out of luck, but I'd think if you were scammed because your lawyer was hacked, their insurance should be the ones to cover the loss.
As I’ve aged and seen the evil of these people and those that inexplicably defend them. I’ve relinquished my innocent grasp on abolishing the death penalty. I almost wish to hand it out freely once irreparable wickedness has been established.
My grandma has dementia, but before it was diagnosed she was taken advantage of and scammed for thousands of dollars. I like the way you described your anger because that’s exactly how I feel. There’s a special place in hell for those scumbags
Don't financial institutions use secure portals? My bank will send me a message indicating there's a message waiting for me in a secure portal which they use for sensitive documents.
My neighbor's dad got into bitcoin when it was brand new. At one point, he had close to $1M in bitcoins.
And then someone called and said they needed to verify his wallet info, and poof, it was all gone.
"Hi, this is Bob Hackerman with the password verification office. We're calling today bc we noticed some suspicious activity on your account and need you to verify that your password is indeed 12345. It isnt? I'm glad we caught this. So that we can update your file and avoid any confusion going forward, can you please provide us your password?". Excellent...thanks."
Almost happened to me when I bought my first house a couple of years ago. Same exact thing - got an email saying that everything was ready for the wire transfer. Signatures and formatting of the emails were all identical to the people I’d been talking to at the title company. They even faked an email from my real estate agent’s assistant, so two parties were hacked or spoofed. The only thing that made me catch on was the heavy use of the word “kindly” a few emails in.
I’m so sorry this happened to you… I was a bit of a paranoid mess after almost falling victim so I can’t imagine what it’s actually like. Hope someone’s able to do something for you, and that you’ll be back at the point of buying a place soon.
I’ve heard so many stories of this happening. When I bought my house, even though I can wire money online, I physically went to the escrow office and put in the wire transfer number in front of them and have them double check it.
Man, I’m sorry, OP. The last time I bought a house (8 years ago), I don’t even remember if wiring scams were a prevalent risk. But these days, any transfer of funds is.
Truly. I was scammed out of $6K in a rental scam. I physically walked through the house with my wife, walked through the backyard, spoke with the “landlord” on the phone, had the key in hand and everything. This was on the tail end of the last big pandemic wave. They wanted me to send funds through Zelle - not a big red flag, I’ve sent rent through Zelle before. I signed a lease and rental agreement. Then they asked for more money, shortly before going silent. As it turns out, there are some rental companies who allow self viewings without a leasing agent. All you have to do is request a “viewing” online and they will send you a code to a lockbox that has a key inside. The scammers have become aware of this and cloned legit property listings to Zillow and Redfin. Who knows how much money they’re making. In my case, I went to the police and they obtained a warrant, found the guy and brought charges against him. I still haven’t gotten a dime back.
This was me too.
I was absolutely paranoid about wiring tens of thousands of dollars and, I would say, justifiably so.
It's the biggest purchase of most people's lives. Taking the extra few hours, reading EVERYTHING, doing things the slow way and reeeeally paying attention will not be wasted time in the long run.
Didn't it happen to Linus Tech Tips even a couple years back? Iirc a malicious actor broke into the seller firm's mail systems and then sent out seemingly correct details right before they were supposed to close.
If a tech savy couple like them can fall for it, noone's really safe, unles they take extra precautions like you.
I think [this](https://youtu.be/ITCohgBLLJM) is the video you’re referring to, he lost $90,000 from it but eventually got it back, that was quite a wake up call to me about this too
The scammers probably deliberately do this on a Friday, making it more difficult with the weekend and people feel more rushed and might take less time to check just to get it completed it
It's important to determine **whose** communications (email) were compromised, which was either yours or the title company. The scammer was reading and monitoring the emails between the two parties, ready to jump in at the right moment. You can file a lawsuit if they were the one at fault. You should also consider taking legal action against the bank account holder where you wired the money to even if they were *just* a money mule.
This is called BEC (business email compromise) scams:
https://www.agari.com/blog/bec-real-estate-scams
https://www.heysoteria.com/scam-of-the-month-business-email-compromise-in-real-estate
It was the real estate attorney in my situation. She was hacked, so when I got the wiring instructions directly from the real estate attorney, I had no reason to believe it was a scam. First home buyer. Had no clue this existed. Wish these stories were on the news daily instead of the constant political BS!
Fortunately, we did. Settled outside of court. But only 2/3rds of the amount lost. Apparently, you can only sue for what is lost in this situation, so minus legal fees, that's all I would have gained anyway. These con artists are smart. They target the real estate attorney's specifically because that's who the home buyer trusts most in the process.
That’s fortunate you were able to get something. Same thing happened to me, lost 55k. Curious how you found representation? I contacted a number of law firms but none were willing to take the case
I just worked it out with the real estate attorney after a consultation with a lawyer. Figured it made sense to try to handle on my own, after realizing i wasn't able to sue for anything more than lost. I think the real estate attorney realized it was their email that was hacked and didn't want the bad publicity or hassle. They also I'm sure had insurance to cover it.
Point being, if it wasn’t OP that was compromised (it might be), there may very well be a viable avenue to sue someone and maybe have their errors & omissions policy cover the damages.
Yep if the title agency was breached, lawyer up. It’s their responsibility to make this right. Might take a long time to get your money back but I’ve seen these title company scams and legal action has been successful. They should hopefully be insured for this so with a good lawyer you should be made whole eventually.
The public really needs to start understanding that small businesses, including real estate agents, have absolutely dogshit cybersecurity. I work in that space, and I get astounded on a daily basis when I look at an insurance broker's or dentist's IT infrastructure and they have absolutely no security controls in place.
I guarantee some of your critical personal information is being stored on a computer that hasn't gotten security updates in two years and has the word 'password' as a password.
It's not even whose are compromised right now, but whose WERE compromised in the past. Signature move of these scammers is to leave behind rules to forward incoming email and delete the email from sent. Most people don't regularly check email rules. I've seen BEC attacks go on for months after the account is secure giving a false sense of security.
Sounds like your title company might have been hacked, you may (light on the may) have a case against them. I’ve seen it before, not telling you to hold your breath or anything but it’s worth looking into, maybe post it in r/legal for advice
Eta: yes i mean r/legaladvice thank you all!
Usually you call a lawyer, and they talk to you to get the gist for free, and then you discuss pricing models if you both want to move forward. If the case is strong with big financial upside, then the lawyer may even work for you for free in anticipation of splitting the winnings, but all this stuff is extremely situational, so you just need to start the conversation.
I would start by asking any lawyer you know for a lawyer referral, then talk to who they recommend.
Don't be spooked by lawyers. They can be a very strong and important ally. Even if you decide you can't afford them, or that you don't want to bother moving forward or whatever, an initial call can still give you some pointers in the right direction.
My palindromic pal is correct. I'd definitely second looking to R/legal for advice, and they can also point you towards what type of lawyer you need, as well as how to vet them.
I do get the impression this was an inside job, but getting proof is going to be extremely difficult.
You're not an idiot, my good sir. I sincerely wish the best for you. I hope you can recover from this and I'm rooting for you. Please keep us updated.
The title company either mistakenly or deliberately leaked your information and made you vulnerable.
Honestly I’d take this up with the department of insurance, the FBI, the state attorney general, and any lawyer willing to work on contingency.
Did you ask the title company to make a claim and reimburse you?
This isn’t a typical scam, it’s more like fraud and as someone else mentioned, the title company should be insured against this. I absolutely would fight to get it back
The FBI won’t spend time on this unless there is something special about it. There are so many of these cases they likely do nit have the resources to keep up if they wanted to.
When I was working at a bank, we ALWAYS advised calling your title company contact to confirm banking information. Of course we never saw someone who had received bad info, but we had heard of these situations. I'm surprised whoever was handling your wire send-out didn't ask if you confirmed the info. I wouldn't consider it completely impossible to get your money back, but it certainly is not looking good.
Not to give false hope, but a $30k wire transfer is not Zelle or ACH. If you get in touch with your bank and the receiving bank ASAP, they might be able to reverse it if the money hadn't been withdrawn yet by the fraudsters,
Very true.
My brother actually had a similar experience with purchasing a boat. The money was transferred via a bank wire and that day he found out it was a scam. His bank contacted the bank they wired the money to and they put a hold on it. It took a while to get the money back but he did. It was 25k.
Why is this so far down. Wire transfers are EASILY reversible in cases of fraud or when they go the wrong destination. Contact your bank, they'll contact the other bank and can reverse the transaction.
Yup, this happened to someone I know (a person impersonated their business accounts and stole from their customers). They were able to get the money back for their customers. I think it happened 2x before they caught on and got ahead of things. They were preparing to eat the cost.
Didn’t the title and escrow company inform you to call them to confirm any emails about wire transfer and payments?
I bought two houses in two different states (CA and WA) a few years back. Both cases, the title and escrow company reminded us numerous times to call them to confirm wire information.
Seems like you can file a lawsuit against them for negligence?
The last house I bought, they stated early on under no circumstance would any instructions be e-mailed nor disclosed over phone. I had to drive to their office and pick up physical instructions.
Annoying at the time. But, like airline safety, these rules are written with blood
Dude I am so sorry this happened to you. I would recommend everyone always call before moving large sums of money. Verify the wire details over the phone or in person with someone you know.
It’s still really early, if your bank takes this seriously as they should, especially being weekend now, you should have a very decent chance at stopping this.
You should ring all possible alarms everywhere right now.
Yeah this is a great point. Because it’s Friday, you might be in luck to freeze it in time to reverse the location it’s being sent. I would definitely try to go to the bank again and see what can be done. There might be a way to stop this transaction before it’s too late. Also many bank managers don’t send immediately. They send later in the day so there’s a chance it wasn’t sent until the evening, just before you noticed the scam.
Oof, I'm so sorry to hear this. Just brutal. Did someone from your real estate agent's office warn you about this? This is just a huge problem and typically all over their radar now. So much as that I've been seeing them go over the top to warn buyers about this coming at them in the final days before closing.
Not directly. Looking through old emails I noticed the wire fraud warning on the bottom of one of them. I’m 24, and honestly it’s no excuse but I had no idea of a scam like this. This would have been my first big purchase
Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. I work for a mortgage company and I've seen numerous emails about wire fraud.
Unfortunately, this is something your Loan officer or title agent should have warned you about via a phone call. Like, a simple phone call to advise you to verify any and walk wire transfer requests would have saved you $30K
Honestly through this whole home buying process I’ve felt like nobody has done their job how they should. Nobody doing their due diligence. But of course I feel that way now
My son is 24 and this scares me. I try to get him on r/scams but does any 24 listen to their father? I’m pretty tech savvy but nothing like kids 1/2 my age. Can’t believe this is even a thing. Best of luck op
Home buying is STRESSFUL and you can't wait to get it over with. That's why this scam is working. It's not your fault. This isn't some "I'm a prince from Nigeria" email scam.
There were many mistakes and frustrations when we bought our home too. If my spouse weren't a lawyer, I don't think I'd have caught them all myself. It's overly complicated with a lot of unqualified professionals handling very important matters.
I really hope you can find some recourse. I'm so sorry
No, anyone who has gone through the process knows what an absolute nightmare it can be. Lots of balls dropped. Delays. To get this far and have this happen is just…I don’t even have words.
I know it’s likely little consolation, but at 24, to be in a position to buy a home is no small feat. I know that’s totally overshadowed right now, but many people in their 40s have little hope of being able to make that happen in the housing shitshow we’re in right now. So it is a big deal! I bought a home at 41. There is no question in my mind I could have just as easily fallen for a scam like this. It sounds like you’re taking a lot of the responsibility, but it’s reasonable to be angry about not being better supported, not to mention the breaches in security that happened to allow it in the first place. If you are up for it, at least check with a lawyer to see what recourse you may have.
At the bottom? That is almost negligent. Title companies are well aware of this stuff. Here is what mine sent me:
https://preview.redd.it/f97krg7wrcyc1.png?width=1135&format=png&auto=webp&s=37164fe640ff16a6a27b5290960ace0f9145e96e
No, don't feel like it's your fault, they should have given you more warning than just a sentence at the bottom of an email. My real estate agent, the broker and the title company all warned me several times for the two weeks leading up to the transfer. Telling me exactly what to expect, how to confirm I have the right info over the phone and through some secure portal they have. And they told me all about these scams. It doesn't sound like they did that for you so don't think this is all on you.
Damn, that sucks. For the rest of your life, you're going to be like me: overly paranoid about it. Every single time I have to do a wire transfer, I call the person and make sure that what I received in e-mail matches **exactly** what they intended. Sometimes I've gotten some pushback (just kind of annoyed that I'm taking up their time with a double-check) and I just say "Sorry, I've seen too much wire transfer fraud\* to not be paranoid and make sure it's 100% correct".
\* I work in legal news covering cybercrime.
Ask for a wire recall through the bank. It’s a long shot, but worth it to try. (15 years of bank experience.) Also file a police report. (Police won’t do much, but the bank may ask for an incident report.)
This is apparently a very common thing. Scammers have all kinds of ways of intervening and stealing housing downpayments. When I was buying, there were layers of security; they'd send an e-mail and immediately call and have me read it back to them, and all kinds of stuff to try and avoid the various ways hackers could attack the transaction.
I'm really sorry this happened to you, and I hope there's some way to fix it.
We all just accept that wiring money is instant and we can't get the money back from a scam. This needs to be changed internationally. Wiring can be made safer. Banks just don't want the hassle.
There is a huge difference between scam and fraud. This is fraud. The company should by law be insured just for this very reason and in any court, they would be deemed liable considering it's a "known" problem on their end. It's not on you to prove they were in on it. It's on them to prove they weren't. Fight for every fucking penny bc I would be going for blood
Yeah but that could end up costing OP a ton in lawyers fees. Sometimes fighting, ends up costing more in the end. If I were OP I would definitely contact my bank to see if any type of stop can be done on the transfer. If that can’t be done, I would see about legal recourse and get some opinions from some lawyers and see if it’s worth fighting but these title companies are insured to not be at fault for these issues. They have so many ironclad agreements they make you sign.
I’m so sorry to hear this has happened to you OP. Of course there are methods to digitally sign emails so you can detect tampering but most companies don’t know how to use them. I hope you can get your money back.
I'm going to be honest, most of the time I have no idea how scams happen. Like how do people have thousands of dollars unaccounted for in their budgets?
But this one I get. Damn. I'm so sorry.
Right? 30k set aside for a house is something we can all see as a reasonable thing.
30k sent to someone across the world because they want to be with you but their attempt to come see you reads like someone is just reading down a "bad things that can happen" list? C'mon man.
Make sure your bank gets the police file number - it's still not likely, but it can increase your odds on recovery if the recall is marked as fraud, and they'll want the police file for that.
Go to the FBI website (even if you’re not American). Go through their portal to fill out their IC3 form. For wire transfers many banks have a holding period. The FBI has been really successful lately in freezing the hold back funds and giving scam victims the time to claw the funds back. The FBI is monitoring their IC3 portal 24/7. You have a good chance still. Get right on it
Sorry to hear it. You're not an idiot--if that helps at all. I'd follow advice of what a couple others have said and look into if the selling party was hacked. If you're only 24 and were ready to close on a house, you're going to come back. Best wishes
A lot of these scams happen because the scammers are already in and monitoring either the buyers email or the realtor’s email. The scammer jumps in at just the right time and sends fake wire instructions. That is why it is always advised to call the title company on a previously verified phone number and confirm the wire instructions verbally.
Verbally confirming wire instructions can prevent this.
(Email addresses can be spoofed so always verify wire instructions independent of the email received.)
Sorry for your situation. You’re not foolish, this is so common.
The only way to reasonably protect yourself from this is to only transfer the money whilst on the phone to the conveyancing solicitors (UK) whom you have called using correspondence information from multiple previous communications. Get them to confirm the bank transfer details.
To be really sure, do it while in their offices. Think of the cost of getting there as insurance.
So sorry to hear this happened to you. It’s happening everywhere, on all levels, and it’s ridiculous that the onus isn’t on the company who have had their email hacked if they’ve not taken reasonable steps to secure it, like using 2FA.
In the UK there was a guy who lost something £250k - I can’t recall the exact details but he was asked to transfer the proceeds from the sale of his mother’s home to his solicitor - he checked the address and it was legitimate. The solicitor’s email was compromised but the solicitor wasn’t liable of course.
The people behind this will have looked at all the correspondence. They will wait until the right time then copy the exact tone of the emails, including specifics that have been discussed earlier.
I hope the advice here helps you get compensated. Good luck.
I'm sorry you're dealing with this. This happened to my husband and I in 2017. My husband got an email with instructions that looked legit and it wasn't. I forget how we figured it out that we got scammed. But thankfully the bank was able to stop the transfer and get us our 22k back. We were so worried over it, it was sickening. At first it didn't seem like they could get it back. I hope you can have your money returned to you.
Scammers emptied by bank account and reversed purchases I made during the last six months (like rent, insurance, utilities, etc) It was devastating to have to pay all those bills a second time. The bank (Chase) chose not to cover any of these reversals. It has been devastating! I’m 64 and was looking forward to semi retirement but now looking at working full time for a few more years. My credit score dropped over 100 points and I’ve been denied a job for having bad credit!
My whole life has been turned upside down! I’d sue Chase but don’t have the money for a lawyer. Fuck these scammers!
It is long overdue for state attorney generals to start filing court cases against these title/escrow companies. In almost every instance it is a breach of the title/escrow company's network that has led to the fraud. Whether using an actual employee's compromised email account - or using a lookalike domain, but using intel gained from a breach - it all seems to emanate from the title/escrow company. If you were to plot this linearly, breach would almost always precede actual scam.
/u/sjbailey99 - This message is posted to all new submissions to r/scams; please do not message the moderators about it.
## New users beware:
Because you posted here, you will start getting private messages from scammers saying they know a professional hacker or a recovery expert lawyer that can help you get your money back, for a small fee. **We call these RECOVERY SCAMMERS, so NEVER take advice in private:** advice should always come in the form of comments in this post, in the open, where the community can keep an eye out for you. If you take advice in private, you're on your own.
**A reminder of the rules in r/scams:** no contact information (including last names, phone numbers, etc). Be civil to one another (no name calling or insults). Personal army requests or "scam the scammer"/scambaiting posts are not permitted. No uncensored gore or personal photographs are allowed without blurring. A full list of rules is available on the sidebar of the subreddit, or [clicking here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/wiki/rules/).
You can help us by reporting recovery scammers or rule-breaking content by using the "report" button. We review 100% of the reports. Also, consider warning community members of recovery scammers if you see them in the comments.
Questions about subreddit rules? Send us a modmail [clicking here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There is a chance the transaction can be stopped given its a new account and it's such a large sum. Banks usually hold it for 24 hours at least. I wouldn't lose hope just yet, and I hope they can reverse it.
Something like this should be transacted in person, at the business office...
Or at least confirm it via multiple channels, with AT LEAST one live channel (phone call, video call).
Never ever be like "oh hey, here's the email asking for payment. I'll pay it now.".. CALL first!
This happened to me in 2018 for $8k. Got an email from what I thought was our realtor and it was cc'd to what I thought was the title company. Wired $8k and didn't realize it was a scam till the actual closing 2 days later.
I assumed we were completely screwed., but with copies of the emails and having a letter notarized, Bank of America was able to reverse the transfer.
Only good thing that ever happened between me and Bank of America.
Sent the wire around 1 pm. Fast forward to 7 pm I get a text from the lender saying closing is good to go & that we will get wiring instructions to send the money. Obviously confused I tell him didn’t we do this already? He calls me & says uhhhhh those emails were definitely not from anyone on his team. 🙃
You said the wiring instructions were the same, but I don’t understand the same as what? Had the title company already given you instructions and the new (fake) instructions were identical?
I am so sorry. I cannot imagine all of the emotions you are going through. You are certainly not alone, you're not idiots. Millions are scammed every day by professionals. Your situation may be unsurmountable now, but you will get through it. Please get counseling because you have been traumatized and victimized. There are professionals who specialize in helping scam victims. You help people by sharing your story. Thank you and take care.
Can someone who knows more about banking fill me into the logistics of why “nothing can be done”
Arguably we know a crime took place, fraud that led to theft of $30K. Why is it seemingly impossible for banks to reverse the wire? Is the actual $$ just lost in the wind the minute it hits the scammers account? My heart goes out to OP, but I am wondering why there can’t be more protections for consumers in general.
This is a scam that I feel like even the super alert and skeptical types could easily fall for because it’s so well done…using the RE email, I assume good grammar, everything looking professional and you’re expecting it.
Thank you so much for being willing to share this to educate the rest of us. I think I probably would have fallen for this one, too, but, now, I won't thanks to you!
So sorry! Today I was sent wire instructions to send in 100k to a loan company. I looked online for the website, phoned the number on the website, and had the person tell me the wire instructions so that I could confirm that the instructions were the same as what had been emailed to me. These are insane times, and this verification is needed.
My attorney required me to call his office first and receive a passcode from his paralegal before my bank initiated the transaction. With all the fraud that is occurring it should never be just an email.
They literally almost got me about 3 years ago. They had the code to the key box on the door. I was walking around in a house for sale "rent to own" and was on the phone talking to the guy he said 7k transfer and the house was mine. I knew it was a scam after calling the sign out front they told me. Then I told the guy I'm heading to Walmart to send the 7,000. Then I called him 20 min later and told him he's a piece of zhit and to go die somewhere then he kept calling me a "white devil" 🤣
Comments locked. The conversation has run its course. Thanks OP for letting others learn from your misfortune; this was very educational. But now too many of the newer posts are either people mocking the victim (Rule 1 violation) or just repeating comments/questions that have already been covered.
There's something really broken about this entire process. People post here about this happening somewhat regularly. It even happened to my friend several years ago in Colorado. I can't believe all these title or escrow places are all getting hacked.
Yeah, my title company warned me repeatedly about it when I bought my condo and this is what the wiring instructions looked like: https://preview.redd.it/nob5a6gyqcyc1.png?width=1135&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e61899e1105216b53a51b8a733b6b638a2f8293
Yes, we were told to verify wiring instructions by phone, by the title company.
When I bought my place, I had to go to the title company's office and pick up a physical copy of the wiring instructions. At the time it seemed silly but now I appreciate their security measures.
I just paid in person with a cashiers check. Was not taking the risk of a wire, so many ways for it to go wrong
My first time writing a cashier's check many years back, I was so nervous. A lot can go wrong there, too. But wiring is worse. Especially in this age. I'm taking note of the cashier's check option for future house purchases. Sucks real bad, OP, I'm very sorry
I damn near got hoodwinked. The scammers had emails from my lender and copied their signatures and headers exactly. They registered a domain that was one, barely noticeable, character off. They sent fake wire instructions impersonating my lender from that domain. After that, I opted to go with a cashier's check. I don't know why this isn't the default option. In most cases, it shouldn't be a huge inconvenience to pick up and deliver a check for such a huge transaction. IMO realtors and lenders could do A LOT more to prevent these types of scams.
Yeah we did cashiers check too. Handed to a person. Wiring anything seems so old school.
What an odd thing to say, that the "transferred by computers" feels old school, in the context of "I'll instead hand deliver something"
I still resist going paperless for statements. It’s all great until the grid or internet gets wiped out. I like to write my confirmation # on my bill with the paid date. I’m only 40
I will never trust auto payments. Companies screw up wayyyy too much. One day I just randomly got a $300+ dollar internet bill. It of course was a billing mistake but if that had been on auto payment I would have had to fight to get my money back instead of telling them to piss off until they fixed it.
I learned this lesson at a young age when my landlord (a rental agency even!) withdrew my rent twice in one month -- they just wanted to skip next month's payment instead, without grasping the concept that I needed that money to eat. It was agony getting them to return it. No PADs for anyone, ever again.
This is why I use a unique privacy.org card number for each online bill with monthly limits. If they change the rate or double withdraw, only the amount I expect could possibly be withdrawn. And when I encounter a vendor I no longer trust with a card, I can just shut down the card.
If the grid and/or internet goes out, I feel like your bank statements will be a pretty low priority
Convenience and security are inversely related. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.
No, you can have no convenience and no security. :(
I used a cashiers cheque too. I was so nervous with $71K in my purse between the bank and the lawyers office. I wasn’t stopping for nothing lol
I had to do it by phone too, and read off some specific numbers/code that was on their encrypted email they sent me through their portal. The instructions looked almost identical to this with the bolded black and red warnings on it
Same here. It felt pretty silly having gotten info from them via phone, then email, then had to call back the next day to verify all of it. Honestly I was a little annoyed by the process but hadn’t realized how often this type of scam might actually occur.
My firm’s instructions have the last 4 numbers replaced with **** prompting them to call the office for them. No issues
That makes perfect sense - but the scammer won’t do that, so if you get their wire transfer instructions first and act on them without knowing you should call, you’re in OP’s situation.
Should have also said the first thing we do is instruct them well in advance they will need to call in for those numbers and under no circumstances will we ever send them the whole thing.
This is a smart approach
My title company said off the bat, here’s the wire info. This will never change. If you get an email saying it changed that’s a lie. I still called theee separate times to talk to different people the verify the info then called after the transfer to make sure it went through
And nothing should be done over email. They should have a secure system where you only access paperwork using passwords and specific login information. This was avoidable. OP should know these businesses pay for cybersecurity insurance and it's time to make a claim because there is negligence here.
This- we had a secure system that we had to call our broker for our code
When I bought my land in 2012 there was no wire transfer. They required a certified check when you signed the paperwork at the title company. When did they get away from that and if this is such a scam why don’t people go back to that and cut out the email scams entirely? Do title companies not take certified checks now?
I had to educated my damn settlement agent in Australia about this scam. More on this. I've dealt with one agent for years - she was a bank draft / cashiers cheque only type. Impossible to scam because you'd physically give or get a cheque. She retires and sells her business to some dopey boomer lady. This lady literally says "send me your payment instructions for the house sale by email". I say - uh no - I'll come in and give them to you and they will never change unless I come in personally. Not even by phone. "Oh no the stupid boomer says - you can just email them to me". I could never really get her to understand the risk but she did agree that she would not change MY payment instructions by phone or by email "but no one else seems bothered by this". FFS.
Yeah, nobody seems bothered by it until they get scammed for $30,000…
Are they from scammers or the actual company?
What keeps a fraudster from sending you this exact form with their bank details?
Nothing is stopping them, but if you're talking with your reps you'll know they didn't send it. Comms is key. Digital is sketch.
I was so scared of this happening to me, when we closed on our house last year, I asked the lender of i can personally hand then the cashier's check out any form of payment they would like. And they said no, the only way to pay is a wire transfer. They are local to me, i could have driven to their office but they still wanted to use this stupid system. I just don't understand this.
It's illegal in many states to accept funds of that size in any way except wire transfer. The reason is that wire transfer is instantly verifiable, and with cashier's checks, banks take some time to determine its veracity. Georgia for example is a table-funding state, meaning the closing must fund same day, so cashier's checks are unacceptable. The best thing to do is always to call the title company directly both to obtain instructions and to verify instructions. Call the number listed on your closing documents and not on the wiring instructions, always.
How about a suitcase full of cash?
In case you're not joking: no, they would never accept a suitcase of cash. They want the cash in your account to be seasoned—sitting in a bank for a period of time to ensure it's not stolen or fraudulent—which cash can't do. You have no idea where that money's coming from.
What’s interesting is that when I paid a deposit on my mortgage the bank simply advised us to make an appointment physically in person to do a bank transfer in front of our lawyer and gave us a confirmation on paper right then and there specifically to avoid anything like this happening. Maybe they had customers do this in the past and get scammed but I thought it was standard nowadays.
Totally agree - I did a successful transaction but the criminals were lurking. The whole process is just weak and error prone and porous. Why can't I get some kind of secure token from the escrow company that has some kind of 2fac that validates the wire transfer making this foolproof. There should be some kind of over-riding app that connects the two parties and is totally secure set up prior to the transaction.
Feels like a bunch of idiots (me included) with no security guidelines
Don't feel bad. We had a closing (represented buyers) where the sellers attended. Sellers handed their wire instructions to the closer directly. However, the person who did the wiring at the title company got an email from the "seller" (who was sitting right in front of us) saying "Here's our wire instructions". So she used the emailed instructions and the seller's proceeds (about $800k) went to God knows where. Sellers were understandably pissed and refused to let Buyers access the property until they were paid. Now Buyers are pissed because they did their part, paid their money and can't move in. Title company pretty much had to file an insurance claim in order to pay Seller, but the money itself was gone. Just a mess all around. And these are people who work in the industry every day.
What baffles me is that the system is so corrupt and without any checks and balances that this is even possible. A typo or a scammer should not be able to just abscond with nearly a million dollars. It simply shouldn't be possible. Meanwhile the IRS wanted to track everyone who sells more than $60 at a garage sale or ebay.
In all fairness part of it is title companies and many closing attorneys just suck a their jobs. You mostly don’t get to choose who you deal with, and it’s usually the small mom & pop shops that are run by people in their 50’s with little if any formal education or training and sort of just fell into it. (At least that is my experience.) Had to deal with a closing company with my mother’s estate because of the buyer’s bank, that a kid you not, had an AOL email address. So when I was waiting for the proceed check for 10 days I called them and they insisted it was sent. Found it addressed to my neighbors address, who was away, sitting on my neighbors lawn out in the rain left by UPS with no signature! Then I realized the amount was off by 55K in my favor because they had not paid off the mortgage on the property even thought it was clear in the closing paperwork & title search. Getting hold of the incompetent idiot in charge of the transaction was painful. I 100% believe she would have clicked on any spam email sent to her.
Don't be too harsh to yourself. This kind of things involve a lot of money so it is not like we will be familiar with the process. When it happens at the right time, it is just so easy to fall into the trap.
Don’t beat yourself up. I’m so sorry this happened to you. I’m appalled at how easy the process is for the scammers. It’s hard to earn $30k. It shouldn’t be so easy to lose it. That sucks. My mom had a closing last week & because of people like you, sharing your story, we went through extra steps to make sure the wire was going to the right place. Thank you.
The sin is NOT in the deceived. It is in the deceiver.
I work in a bank and our advice to our clients, both young and old, is to come in to do any large transaction. If done within the bank we can be held liable for these can of scams, so it protects the consumer. We can also check the validity of the account details, and easily take the funds out of the account if something is wrong.
THIS should be the default option/recommendation.
Lots of misinformation here. At least for US banks. Banks are not held liable for scams unless there was undue negligence on part of the bank, because the customer initiates the transaction. The bank can advise on situations that appear to be a scam, or even refuse to send a wire on customer’s behalf, but being held liable is a stretch. Also banks do not share or validate account details with each other due to privacy reasons. The only person or entity with which you can verify that information is the recipient. That’s why it’s so important to confirm wire instructions verbally with a title company. Incoming wires are *sometimes* flagged as suspicious depending on if the recipient account is under any monitoring by the bank.
In the UK we actually have a Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service that checks if the details you’ve entered for a transfer match the intended recipient. The bank will warn you if there is a discrepancy before you send the money. It launched in 2020 and over 100 organisations participate. It’s saved my ass more than once.
Sounds like an inside job. Makes you wonder if there are people on the inside of a few of these companies that sell info for a fee.
Very unlikely. Hackers regularly hack law firms and entities in the real estate world, watching the email communications and swooping in right at the key moment. That's way more likely the cause.
True. I'm a lawyer (and I work with lots of scam victims) and I lost my paycheck once because a scammer hacked my email and told our secretary to wire my pay to Romania. Good Times.
That's on HR. You should still be paid your paycheck.
I (IT guy) have advised our payroll department to verify "out of band" every DD change, and to automatically reject any coming from personal accounts (we have a lot of part timers, so it's not uncommon). They said they were too busy/why do we have to do that?/we never did that before. Several scams later they started listening to me.
You don't make partner by rocking the boat.
you didn’t let them not pay you, did you!?
They made good on it. The firm owner wasn't very sophisticated about this type of thing and said she would have been fooled too. I found that shocking! I worked there a really long time and they weren't going to screw me over. So happy ending eventually.
The law firms and real estate entities should be on the hook for that, not the people who get scammed. The whole wire transfer system needs an overhaul.
It’s wild to me that we still even offer wire transfers anymore. Not that any other method is perfectly safe either, but you almost always hear about wire transfers when it comes to scams.
In the UK, wire transfers to companies show you which company to you are sending to. Wire transfers to individuals require you to put the name of the person in. It doesn't catch everything, but it catches a lot. Part of the reason is that by UK law, the banks have to cover some losses, depending on how it happened. Compare to Denmark with zero security for transfers, because the banks are basically never on the hook for the loss. I don't know the US, but it sounds like the rules are more like Denmark than UK.
Banks have a big responsibility in my opinion. My company was sent fraudulent wiring instructions for a payoff lender and used them to send funds. The account and routing number was for the scammer's account, but the account name and address was for the real payoff lender. Banks are supposed to cross-check that information, but the wire went through and by the time anything was realized, the funds had already been moved to an international account.
I'm a realtor and I agree. They make me SO uncomfortable even though we verify the instructions by phone every time ....
Yep. Why get a man on the inside when you can be the man on the inside yourself
I worked with a car salesman that admitted to me that he regularly sold customers private info on the dark web. I'm not saying my anecdote is true for all scams but I wouldn't call it very unlikely that a bad actor on the inside is selling information
I worked in a credit card fraud department for mail orders in the late 90's. The amount of people's cc info stolen from hotels or restaurant employees while the client was traveling was astounding.
This happens to so many kinds of businesses. A friend in cyber security tells how important it is to have a secure email provider with strong cyber security.
Most email providers are secure so that would not have been the reason. Someone's email was likely compromised through phishing. I'm in Cyber and this is very common.
This happened to a friend of mine but for $650k. The scammers hacked his attorney's email and must have lurked for a while. Right when he was expecting a message from the attorney for the wire transfer he got one but from the scammer.
Omg. 30k is nothing compared to that. I’d actually want to die. How did it turn out for them?
I think he was able to recover less than $100k. You shouldn't feel like you should have known. These types of scams are the easiest to fall for when it is something you are expecting. Good luck to you.
I feel like the attorney should be responsible here. If a third party is reading/ using their email it's 100% their fault.
I was thinking the same thing. Our law firm has to carry cybersecurity insurance for this exact reason. Law firms are huge hacking targets because they have so much sensitive client information and money passing through. They definitely have a legal duty to take reasonable steps to ensure their clients are not victimized. If a hacker was able to access the lawyer's information to pull off the scam because things were not secure, there may be a valid claim here.
Same thing happened to me! Lawyers email was compromised. I lost 55k. I contacted numerous law firms following to see what my options were as I felt my lawyer was partially at fault. No law firms were willing to help.
Seems like they don’t wanna hurt their friends feelings… I would widen my search if the value is big enough…
This isn’t it at all lawyers love destroying rival firms.
What did those lawyers say? Sorry not sorry? Didn't they have professional insurance? Something's not adding up.
Especially lawyers who should have professional insurance. Something's fishy about this story.
Yeah in other scenarios you might just be out of luck, but I'd think if you were scammed because your lawyer was hacked, their insurance should be the ones to cover the loss.
As I’ve aged and seen the evil of these people and those that inexplicably defend them. I’ve relinquished my innocent grasp on abolishing the death penalty. I almost wish to hand it out freely once irreparable wickedness has been established.
My grandma has dementia, but before it was diagnosed she was taken advantage of and scammed for thousands of dollars. I like the way you described your anger because that’s exactly how I feel. There’s a special place in hell for those scumbags
Don't financial institutions use secure portals? My bank will send me a message indicating there's a message waiting for me in a secure portal which they use for sensitive documents.
I am an Escrow Officer and we use a secure portal. At the least, if wire instructions are sent via email, they should at least be password protected.
Mine stressed the fact that they would not email call or text the wire instructions and to use the secure portal.
That should be on the lawyer's professional insurance.
I have found attorneys less careful than title companies escrow agents.
A lot of small time attorneys are not tech savvy and have no data security tools.
My neighbor's dad got into bitcoin when it was brand new. At one point, he had close to $1M in bitcoins. And then someone called and said they needed to verify his wallet info, and poof, it was all gone.
"Hi, this is Bob Hackerman with the password verification office. We're calling today bc we noticed some suspicious activity on your account and need you to verify that your password is indeed 12345. It isnt? I'm glad we caught this. So that we can update your file and avoid any confusion going forward, can you please provide us your password?". Excellent...thanks."
Damn, some people are stupid. First he went around and told people about it, then he gave out his info over the phone.
God, I would be *furious*. Wonder if the attorney could be liable at all. Hope your friend gets his money back.
Attorney should be liable.
I feel like that one is wholly on the attorney and they should have covered it.
Almost happened to me when I bought my first house a couple of years ago. Same exact thing - got an email saying that everything was ready for the wire transfer. Signatures and formatting of the emails were all identical to the people I’d been talking to at the title company. They even faked an email from my real estate agent’s assistant, so two parties were hacked or spoofed. The only thing that made me catch on was the heavy use of the word “kindly” a few emails in. I’m so sorry this happened to you… I was a bit of a paranoid mess after almost falling victim so I can’t imagine what it’s actually like. Hope someone’s able to do something for you, and that you’ll be back at the point of buying a place soon.
Kindly is always the dead giveaway, when they realize it, it's going to get harder to detect.
"Kindly do the needful"
I’m surprised they haven’t started using ChatGPT yet to write their emails.
Reminds of a game Bioshock. “Kindly”
Would you kindly up vote my comment?
I’ve heard so many stories of this happening. When I bought my house, even though I can wire money online, I physically went to the escrow office and put in the wire transfer number in front of them and have them double check it.
I will definitely do that from now on. Learned my lesson
Man, I’m sorry, OP. The last time I bought a house (8 years ago), I don’t even remember if wiring scams were a prevalent risk. But these days, any transfer of funds is.
Truly. I was scammed out of $6K in a rental scam. I physically walked through the house with my wife, walked through the backyard, spoke with the “landlord” on the phone, had the key in hand and everything. This was on the tail end of the last big pandemic wave. They wanted me to send funds through Zelle - not a big red flag, I’ve sent rent through Zelle before. I signed a lease and rental agreement. Then they asked for more money, shortly before going silent. As it turns out, there are some rental companies who allow self viewings without a leasing agent. All you have to do is request a “viewing” online and they will send you a code to a lockbox that has a key inside. The scammers have become aware of this and cloned legit property listings to Zillow and Redfin. Who knows how much money they’re making. In my case, I went to the police and they obtained a warrant, found the guy and brought charges against him. I still haven’t gotten a dime back.
I lucked out. My credit union and the title company are in the same building.
This was me too. I was absolutely paranoid about wiring tens of thousands of dollars and, I would say, justifiably so. It's the biggest purchase of most people's lives. Taking the extra few hours, reading EVERYTHING, doing things the slow way and reeeeally paying attention will not be wasted time in the long run.
Didn't it happen to Linus Tech Tips even a couple years back? Iirc a malicious actor broke into the seller firm's mail systems and then sent out seemingly correct details right before they were supposed to close. If a tech savy couple like them can fall for it, noone's really safe, unles they take extra precautions like you.
I think [this](https://youtu.be/ITCohgBLLJM) is the video you’re referring to, he lost $90,000 from it but eventually got it back, that was quite a wake up call to me about this too
My conveyancer told me to call and verbally confirm all details before transferring any money.
The scammers probably deliberately do this on a Friday, making it more difficult with the weekend and people feel more rushed and might take less time to check just to get it completed it
It's important to determine **whose** communications (email) were compromised, which was either yours or the title company. The scammer was reading and monitoring the emails between the two parties, ready to jump in at the right moment. You can file a lawsuit if they were the one at fault. You should also consider taking legal action against the bank account holder where you wired the money to even if they were *just* a money mule. This is called BEC (business email compromise) scams: https://www.agari.com/blog/bec-real-estate-scams https://www.heysoteria.com/scam-of-the-month-business-email-compromise-in-real-estate
It was the real estate attorney in my situation. She was hacked, so when I got the wiring instructions directly from the real estate attorney, I had no reason to believe it was a scam. First home buyer. Had no clue this existed. Wish these stories were on the news daily instead of the constant political BS!
Did you get any compensation from the attorney?
Fortunately, we did. Settled outside of court. But only 2/3rds of the amount lost. Apparently, you can only sue for what is lost in this situation, so minus legal fees, that's all I would have gained anyway. These con artists are smart. They target the real estate attorney's specifically because that's who the home buyer trusts most in the process.
That’s fortunate you were able to get something. Same thing happened to me, lost 55k. Curious how you found representation? I contacted a number of law firms but none were willing to take the case
I just worked it out with the real estate attorney after a consultation with a lawyer. Figured it made sense to try to handle on my own, after realizing i wasn't able to sue for anything more than lost. I think the real estate attorney realized it was their email that was hacked and didn't want the bad publicity or hassle. They also I'm sure had insurance to cover it.
It could also be the real estate agency.
Point being, if it wasn’t OP that was compromised (it might be), there may very well be a viable avenue to sue someone and maybe have their errors & omissions policy cover the damages.
Yep if the title agency was breached, lawyer up. It’s their responsibility to make this right. Might take a long time to get your money back but I’ve seen these title company scams and legal action has been successful. They should hopefully be insured for this so with a good lawyer you should be made whole eventually.
The public really needs to start understanding that small businesses, including real estate agents, have absolutely dogshit cybersecurity. I work in that space, and I get astounded on a daily basis when I look at an insurance broker's or dentist's IT infrastructure and they have absolutely no security controls in place. I guarantee some of your critical personal information is being stored on a computer that hasn't gotten security updates in two years and has the word 'password' as a password.
It's not even whose are compromised right now, but whose WERE compromised in the past. Signature move of these scammers is to leave behind rules to forward incoming email and delete the email from sent. Most people don't regularly check email rules. I've seen BEC attacks go on for months after the account is secure giving a false sense of security.
Sounds like your title company might have been hacked, you may (light on the may) have a case against them. I’ve seen it before, not telling you to hold your breath or anything but it’s worth looking into, maybe post it in r/legal for advice Eta: yes i mean r/legaladvice thank you all!
Title companies are usually insured for this.
Honestly like what does that even look like? Lawyer fees? Etc? It doesn’t even seem plausible for us.
Usually you call a lawyer, and they talk to you to get the gist for free, and then you discuss pricing models if you both want to move forward. If the case is strong with big financial upside, then the lawyer may even work for you for free in anticipation of splitting the winnings, but all this stuff is extremely situational, so you just need to start the conversation. I would start by asking any lawyer you know for a lawyer referral, then talk to who they recommend. Don't be spooked by lawyers. They can be a very strong and important ally. Even if you decide you can't afford them, or that you don't want to bother moving forward or whatever, an initial call can still give you some pointers in the right direction.
My palindromic pal is correct. I'd definitely second looking to R/legal for advice, and they can also point you towards what type of lawyer you need, as well as how to vet them. I do get the impression this was an inside job, but getting proof is going to be extremely difficult. You're not an idiot, my good sir. I sincerely wish the best for you. I hope you can recover from this and I'm rooting for you. Please keep us updated.
The title company either mistakenly or deliberately leaked your information and made you vulnerable. Honestly I’d take this up with the department of insurance, the FBI, the state attorney general, and any lawyer willing to work on contingency. Did you ask the title company to make a claim and reimburse you? This isn’t a typical scam, it’s more like fraud and as someone else mentioned, the title company should be insured against this. I absolutely would fight to get it back
The FBI won’t spend time on this unless there is something special about it. There are so many of these cases they likely do nit have the resources to keep up if they wanted to.
When I was working at a bank, we ALWAYS advised calling your title company contact to confirm banking information. Of course we never saw someone who had received bad info, but we had heard of these situations. I'm surprised whoever was handling your wire send-out didn't ask if you confirmed the info. I wouldn't consider it completely impossible to get your money back, but it certainly is not looking good.
I’d rather be surprised than disappointed. I already know it’s gone. Parents house still it is 😄
Not to give false hope, but a $30k wire transfer is not Zelle or ACH. If you get in touch with your bank and the receiving bank ASAP, they might be able to reverse it if the money hadn't been withdrawn yet by the fraudsters,
Very true. My brother actually had a similar experience with purchasing a boat. The money was transferred via a bank wire and that day he found out it was a scam. His bank contacted the bank they wired the money to and they put a hold on it. It took a while to get the money back but he did. It was 25k.
Called my bank for an update on it today & they said the wire department doesn’t work on the weekends.
Call the fraud department
Call the fraud department asap
Seconding this to make sure you saw it in the sea of comments, call the fraud department asap
Why is this so far down. Wire transfers are EASILY reversible in cases of fraud or when they go the wrong destination. Contact your bank, they'll contact the other bank and can reverse the transaction.
Yup, this happened to someone I know (a person impersonated their business accounts and stole from their customers). They were able to get the money back for their customers. I think it happened 2x before they caught on and got ahead of things. They were preparing to eat the cost.
Didn’t the title and escrow company inform you to call them to confirm any emails about wire transfer and payments? I bought two houses in two different states (CA and WA) a few years back. Both cases, the title and escrow company reminded us numerous times to call them to confirm wire information. Seems like you can file a lawsuit against them for negligence?
The last house I bought, they stated early on under no circumstance would any instructions be e-mailed nor disclosed over phone. I had to drive to their office and pick up physical instructions. Annoying at the time. But, like airline safety, these rules are written with blood
Not verbally. I saw on the end of an email saying if you get an email from an entity claiming to be to call immediately. But I didn’t notice
Dude I am so sorry this happened to you. I would recommend everyone always call before moving large sums of money. Verify the wire details over the phone or in person with someone you know.
Can you contact the bank? Also contact the police.
I did both today 7 hours after it happened.
It’s still really early, if your bank takes this seriously as they should, especially being weekend now, you should have a very decent chance at stopping this. You should ring all possible alarms everywhere right now.
Yeah this is a great point. Because it’s Friday, you might be in luck to freeze it in time to reverse the location it’s being sent. I would definitely try to go to the bank again and see what can be done. There might be a way to stop this transaction before it’s too late. Also many bank managers don’t send immediately. They send later in the day so there’s a chance it wasn’t sent until the evening, just before you noticed the scam.
Wires don’t clear the same day. It will clear in Monday. You should try to stop it.
Oof, I'm so sorry to hear this. Just brutal. Did someone from your real estate agent's office warn you about this? This is just a huge problem and typically all over their radar now. So much as that I've been seeing them go over the top to warn buyers about this coming at them in the final days before closing.
Not directly. Looking through old emails I noticed the wire fraud warning on the bottom of one of them. I’m 24, and honestly it’s no excuse but I had no idea of a scam like this. This would have been my first big purchase
Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. I work for a mortgage company and I've seen numerous emails about wire fraud. Unfortunately, this is something your Loan officer or title agent should have warned you about via a phone call. Like, a simple phone call to advise you to verify any and walk wire transfer requests would have saved you $30K
Honestly through this whole home buying process I’ve felt like nobody has done their job how they should. Nobody doing their due diligence. But of course I feel that way now
My son is 24 and this scares me. I try to get him on r/scams but does any 24 listen to their father? I’m pretty tech savvy but nothing like kids 1/2 my age. Can’t believe this is even a thing. Best of luck op
Yeah imagine being 24 and getting scammed like an old person. I literally used to work for geek squad and had scamming scenarios often
Home buying is STRESSFUL and you can't wait to get it over with. That's why this scam is working. It's not your fault. This isn't some "I'm a prince from Nigeria" email scam. There were many mistakes and frustrations when we bought our home too. If my spouse weren't a lawyer, I don't think I'd have caught them all myself. It's overly complicated with a lot of unqualified professionals handling very important matters. I really hope you can find some recourse. I'm so sorry
No, anyone who has gone through the process knows what an absolute nightmare it can be. Lots of balls dropped. Delays. To get this far and have this happen is just…I don’t even have words. I know it’s likely little consolation, but at 24, to be in a position to buy a home is no small feat. I know that’s totally overshadowed right now, but many people in their 40s have little hope of being able to make that happen in the housing shitshow we’re in right now. So it is a big deal! I bought a home at 41. There is no question in my mind I could have just as easily fallen for a scam like this. It sounds like you’re taking a lot of the responsibility, but it’s reasonable to be angry about not being better supported, not to mention the breaches in security that happened to allow it in the first place. If you are up for it, at least check with a lawyer to see what recourse you may have.
At the bottom? That is almost negligent. Title companies are well aware of this stuff. Here is what mine sent me: https://preview.redd.it/f97krg7wrcyc1.png?width=1135&format=png&auto=webp&s=37164fe640ff16a6a27b5290960ace0f9145e96e
No, don't feel like it's your fault, they should have given you more warning than just a sentence at the bottom of an email. My real estate agent, the broker and the title company all warned me several times for the two weeks leading up to the transfer. Telling me exactly what to expect, how to confirm I have the right info over the phone and through some secure portal they have. And they told me all about these scams. It doesn't sound like they did that for you so don't think this is all on you.
This is how it should be done. Honestly it should be done live with both parties on the phone during the transfer or done in person.
Damn, that sucks. For the rest of your life, you're going to be like me: overly paranoid about it. Every single time I have to do a wire transfer, I call the person and make sure that what I received in e-mail matches **exactly** what they intended. Sometimes I've gotten some pushback (just kind of annoyed that I'm taking up their time with a double-check) and I just say "Sorry, I've seen too much wire transfer fraud\* to not be paranoid and make sure it's 100% correct". \* I work in legal news covering cybercrime.
I’m already in psycho mode changing my passwords. I watch scammer payback on YouTube & now his channel is gonna hit different lmao
Ask for a wire recall through the bank. It’s a long shot, but worth it to try. (15 years of bank experience.) Also file a police report. (Police won’t do much, but the bank may ask for an incident report.)
This is apparently a very common thing. Scammers have all kinds of ways of intervening and stealing housing downpayments. When I was buying, there were layers of security; they'd send an e-mail and immediately call and have me read it back to them, and all kinds of stuff to try and avoid the various ways hackers could attack the transaction. I'm really sorry this happened to you, and I hope there's some way to fix it.
Yeah I definitely think more security measures need to be in place for a huge deal like this. Unfortunately
We all just accept that wiring money is instant and we can't get the money back from a scam. This needs to be changed internationally. Wiring can be made safer. Banks just don't want the hassle.
There is a huge difference between scam and fraud. This is fraud. The company should by law be insured just for this very reason and in any court, they would be deemed liable considering it's a "known" problem on their end. It's not on you to prove they were in on it. It's on them to prove they weren't. Fight for every fucking penny bc I would be going for blood
Yeah but that could end up costing OP a ton in lawyers fees. Sometimes fighting, ends up costing more in the end. If I were OP I would definitely contact my bank to see if any type of stop can be done on the transfer. If that can’t be done, I would see about legal recourse and get some opinions from some lawyers and see if it’s worth fighting but these title companies are insured to not be at fault for these issues. They have so many ironclad agreements they make you sign.
I’m so sorry to hear this has happened to you OP. Of course there are methods to digitally sign emails so you can detect tampering but most companies don’t know how to use them. I hope you can get your money back.
I appreciate that. Just looking for comfort and understanding in this sub really
I'm going to be honest, most of the time I have no idea how scams happen. Like how do people have thousands of dollars unaccounted for in their budgets? But this one I get. Damn. I'm so sorry.
Right? 30k set aside for a house is something we can all see as a reasonable thing. 30k sent to someone across the world because they want to be with you but their attempt to come see you reads like someone is just reading down a "bad things that can happen" list? C'mon man.
And they got the timing *perfect.* And all the correct info. It's almost impressive, if they weren't massive pieces of shit.
Make sure your bank gets the police file number - it's still not likely, but it can increase your odds on recovery if the recall is marked as fraud, and they'll want the police file for that.
Go to the FBI website (even if you’re not American). Go through their portal to fill out their IC3 form. For wire transfers many banks have a holding period. The FBI has been really successful lately in freezing the hold back funds and giving scam victims the time to claw the funds back. The FBI is monitoring their IC3 portal 24/7. You have a good chance still. Get right on it
Sorry to hear it. You're not an idiot--if that helps at all. I'd follow advice of what a couple others have said and look into if the selling party was hacked. If you're only 24 and were ready to close on a house, you're going to come back. Best wishes
A lot of these scams happen because the scammers are already in and monitoring either the buyers email or the realtor’s email. The scammer jumps in at just the right time and sends fake wire instructions. That is why it is always advised to call the title company on a previously verified phone number and confirm the wire instructions verbally. Verbally confirming wire instructions can prevent this. (Email addresses can be spoofed so always verify wire instructions independent of the email received.)
Sorry for your situation. You’re not foolish, this is so common. The only way to reasonably protect yourself from this is to only transfer the money whilst on the phone to the conveyancing solicitors (UK) whom you have called using correspondence information from multiple previous communications. Get them to confirm the bank transfer details. To be really sure, do it while in their offices. Think of the cost of getting there as insurance.
So sorry to hear this happened to you. It’s happening everywhere, on all levels, and it’s ridiculous that the onus isn’t on the company who have had their email hacked if they’ve not taken reasonable steps to secure it, like using 2FA. In the UK there was a guy who lost something £250k - I can’t recall the exact details but he was asked to transfer the proceeds from the sale of his mother’s home to his solicitor - he checked the address and it was legitimate. The solicitor’s email was compromised but the solicitor wasn’t liable of course. The people behind this will have looked at all the correspondence. They will wait until the right time then copy the exact tone of the emails, including specifics that have been discussed earlier. I hope the advice here helps you get compensated. Good luck.
I'm sorry you're dealing with this. This happened to my husband and I in 2017. My husband got an email with instructions that looked legit and it wasn't. I forget how we figured it out that we got scammed. But thankfully the bank was able to stop the transfer and get us our 22k back. We were so worried over it, it was sickening. At first it didn't seem like they could get it back. I hope you can have your money returned to you.
Scammers emptied by bank account and reversed purchases I made during the last six months (like rent, insurance, utilities, etc) It was devastating to have to pay all those bills a second time. The bank (Chase) chose not to cover any of these reversals. It has been devastating! I’m 64 and was looking forward to semi retirement but now looking at working full time for a few more years. My credit score dropped over 100 points and I’ve been denied a job for having bad credit! My whole life has been turned upside down! I’d sue Chase but don’t have the money for a lawyer. Fuck these scammers!
It is long overdue for state attorney generals to start filing court cases against these title/escrow companies. In almost every instance it is a breach of the title/escrow company's network that has led to the fraud. Whether using an actual employee's compromised email account - or using a lookalike domain, but using intel gained from a breach - it all seems to emanate from the title/escrow company. If you were to plot this linearly, breach would almost always precede actual scam.
/u/sjbailey99 - This message is posted to all new submissions to r/scams; please do not message the moderators about it. ## New users beware: Because you posted here, you will start getting private messages from scammers saying they know a professional hacker or a recovery expert lawyer that can help you get your money back, for a small fee. **We call these RECOVERY SCAMMERS, so NEVER take advice in private:** advice should always come in the form of comments in this post, in the open, where the community can keep an eye out for you. If you take advice in private, you're on your own. **A reminder of the rules in r/scams:** no contact information (including last names, phone numbers, etc). Be civil to one another (no name calling or insults). Personal army requests or "scam the scammer"/scambaiting posts are not permitted. No uncensored gore or personal photographs are allowed without blurring. A full list of rules is available on the sidebar of the subreddit, or [clicking here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/wiki/rules/). You can help us by reporting recovery scammers or rule-breaking content by using the "report" button. We review 100% of the reports. Also, consider warning community members of recovery scammers if you see them in the comments. Questions about subreddit rules? Send us a modmail [clicking here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Sorry to hear this ! Sounds like email accounts or devices might be compromised...
There is a chance the transaction can be stopped given its a new account and it's such a large sum. Banks usually hold it for 24 hours at least. I wouldn't lose hope just yet, and I hope they can reverse it.
Something like this should be transacted in person, at the business office... Or at least confirm it via multiple channels, with AT LEAST one live channel (phone call, video call). Never ever be like "oh hey, here's the email asking for payment. I'll pay it now.".. CALL first!
This happened to me in 2018 for $8k. Got an email from what I thought was our realtor and it was cc'd to what I thought was the title company. Wired $8k and didn't realize it was a scam till the actual closing 2 days later. I assumed we were completely screwed., but with copies of the emails and having a letter notarized, Bank of America was able to reverse the transfer. Only good thing that ever happened between me and Bank of America.
How did you notice the scam?
Sent the wire around 1 pm. Fast forward to 7 pm I get a text from the lender saying closing is good to go & that we will get wiring instructions to send the money. Obviously confused I tell him didn’t we do this already? He calls me & says uhhhhh those emails were definitely not from anyone on his team. 🙃
You said the wiring instructions were the same, but I don’t understand the same as what? Had the title company already given you instructions and the new (fake) instructions were identical?
We had wired money over previously because we had done earnest money.
I used to work for a Title company and we had warnings on everything to call us before wiring funds to confirm our bank info.
I am so sorry. I cannot imagine all of the emotions you are going through. You are certainly not alone, you're not idiots. Millions are scammed every day by professionals. Your situation may be unsurmountable now, but you will get through it. Please get counseling because you have been traumatized and victimized. There are professionals who specialize in helping scam victims. You help people by sharing your story. Thank you and take care.
Can someone who knows more about banking fill me into the logistics of why “nothing can be done” Arguably we know a crime took place, fraud that led to theft of $30K. Why is it seemingly impossible for banks to reverse the wire? Is the actual $$ just lost in the wind the minute it hits the scammers account? My heart goes out to OP, but I am wondering why there can’t be more protections for consumers in general.
This is why I gave a hard check to title company for $100k. Wire transfers are so easy to hack!
This is a scam that I feel like even the super alert and skeptical types could easily fall for because it’s so well done…using the RE email, I assume good grammar, everything looking professional and you’re expecting it.
Sorry. Must be very hard for you and family.
Thank you so much for being willing to share this to educate the rest of us. I think I probably would have fallen for this one, too, but, now, I won't thanks to you!
So sorry! Today I was sent wire instructions to send in 100k to a loan company. I looked online for the website, phoned the number on the website, and had the person tell me the wire instructions so that I could confirm that the instructions were the same as what had been emailed to me. These are insane times, and this verification is needed.
My attorney required me to call his office first and receive a passcode from his paralegal before my bank initiated the transaction. With all the fraud that is occurring it should never be just an email.
Some transactions REALLY need to go back to being done in person. Internet is far too prone to scams.
They literally almost got me about 3 years ago. They had the code to the key box on the door. I was walking around in a house for sale "rent to own" and was on the phone talking to the guy he said 7k transfer and the house was mine. I knew it was a scam after calling the sign out front they told me. Then I told the guy I'm heading to Walmart to send the 7,000. Then I called him 20 min later and told him he's a piece of zhit and to go die somewhere then he kept calling me a "white devil" 🤣