Please get the word out to your clients!

As closing attorneys, title insurance agents and business men and women, we receive daily warnings about a myriad of e-mail hacking scams. Many of these schemes involve wiring instructions and attempts to divert escrow funds to remote accounts. Piecing together the two words “wiring” and “instructions” in the subject line of an e-mail seems to entice the worst kinds of fraudsters.

Our own office was hit a year or so ago. We were escrowing funds for an agent’s large commercial transaction, and the agent received a bogus e-mail purportedly but not actually from us telling him to send the money in a different direction. Thankfully, our very astute agent had attended sufficient seminars and read enough fraud alerts to take the simple step of calling us.  Fraud averted!

American Land Title Association and others have written that fraudsters are now attacking buyers, not just businesses who hold escrow funds. And it is happening here!

Within the last few weeks we have heard of three attempts of this nature in Charleston, at least one of which was successful. A buyer wired $150,000 to the wrong account on a Friday afternoon based on a bogus e-mail, spoofed to appear as if it came from the closing attorney. The e-mail said the firm was busy, and advised the recipient not to call but to respond by e-mail if there were questions. That should have been the first clue. The buyer and the banker both said they thought the e-mail and wiring instructions looked funny. But they sent the money out anyway.

Buyers have not attended the seminars nor read the fraud bulletins that have inundated all of us in the last few years. Closing attorneys and real estate agents may be the best line of defense in this situation.

Please communicate with your clients and let them know that a simple telephone call can prevent the diversion of their savings to criminals!