How Real Estate Investors Can Avoid Wire Fraud

While wire fraud cases differ in the particular methods used, real estate wire fraud cases generally involve someone posing as a legitimate party to the transaction -- the closing attorney, title company, real estate agent, etc. This scammer will send authentic-looking wire transfer instructions and may even include other real estate closing documents that look like the real thing, which may even have the correct sale price and other information on them. As an example, one recent case where a young couple was scammed out of nearly $1 million through wire fraud involved hackers somehow inserting themselves into a conversation between the buyer, their real estate agent, and the title company. Wire fraud has become a major problem and is only getting worse.