FRAUD ALERT – TAKE CARE WHEN WIRING MONEY

April 5, 2016 | Buying

WARNING!

Heads up on a growing scam!

“Wire Fraud” (when you wire money to someone), can affect you during a real estate transaction, but also in many other financial dealings. The latest online threat is costing consumers more than a billion dollars a year.

Here’s an example of how wire fraud can affect you – we’ll use a real estate transaction as an example:

Imagine you receive an email, forwarded to you by your real estate agent. The email is from a title company giving you instruction on where to wire money you need for a closing on a house you are buying.

There’s an unseen problem, however.

Somewhere along the way, as the email was passed from title company – to agent – to you, a “hacker” got access to it. It might be by hacking the title company’s email system or by hacking the email system of you or your agent.

 

 

 

 

    • The “hacker” modifies the wiring instructions to direct the money to the hacker’s account.

 

    • You wire the money.

 

    • When you show up for closing, the title company lets you know that they have not received the money.

 

    • The hacker, meanwhile, has moved the money many times through many accounts (and countries) making it almost impossible to recover.

 

     

     

    Here is the VERY SIMPLE SOLUTION if you have to wire money to a company or institution:

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

      1. Don’t wire money based on instructions you receive via email.

     

      1. Look up the company online and get a phone number for them. Don’t use a phone number included in the email that provided the wiring instructions. If that email has been hacked, it will have a fraudulent phone number listed. You want to call a number you’ve verified independently.

     

      1. Call the company and have someone there give you the wiring instructions verbally.

     

      1. If the verbal instructions don’t match what you received in your email – you know your email is fraudulent….use the wiring instructions you received by phone.

     

      1. Notify the person that sent you the email.

     

       

       

      These common sense precautions will go a long way to keep you from being a victim of the newest cyber-crime.

       

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