This content was created by Sander Scott. This content was uploaded by Sander Scott. This is a YouTube video titled "Wire Fraud Warning for Home Buyers and Sellers" (created 2023-12-11). It is an instructional/educational monologue by realtor Sander Scott of Net Real Estate warning about wire-transfer fraud in real estate transactions. He analyzes a specific fraudulent email example, highlights red flags (sender using @gmail, mismatched addresses, unusual urgency and language), explains how fraudsters intercept transactions by impersonation, and advises best practices (verify wiring instructions directly with the title company, have your bank send the wire in person, report suspicious emails). He also references a follow-up video on steps to take if victimized.
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So, wire fraud is real and it is coming to a neighborhood near you. So, I wanted to get this out right away to all of my subscribers, really to anyone, as just a huge warning about wire fraud. And it seems like wire fraud is always something that happens to someone else, and there's a lot of misunderstanding about how it actually occurs. I've talked to some of my clients about giving them warnings about wire fraud, and I think there's an impression among some that it's some sort of electronic hack that interferes with the wire transfer. And that's not how it works. If done properly, wire transfers are the most secure way to move money from one account to another. But it's, it's how a fraudster interferes with that direct line of communication and gets in ahead of it., and I'm gonna show you how they do that right here with this, this particular email. So I've blotted out the property address, which was right here, my client's names, which are right here and right here. But how this fraudster works is they, they have to pose as someone else. And so fraudsters trying to commit wire fraud will pose as a title company. They'll pose as a real estate agent. They'll pose in this case as the real estate agent's administrative assistant. So we'll see here, over here we have Joanne Touché. Joanne works with me as my administrative assistant. I contract that through a company called Transactly down here, and you'll notice this fraudster was able to capture this, uh, image and put it into the email as a way to add some legitimacy to their email. But if we go here and we pay attention to the email address, first clue right here is it's coming from an @gmail account. Okay. I used to have an @gmail account when I first became an agent, but you need to level up. And I leveled up to having my own Google Workspace. So I'm at an @sanderscott.com account now. So it's my email address is sander@sanderscott.com. And so the first thing is anyone can set up a Gmail account. Elon Musk recently was talking about how on his X platform, formerly known as Twitter, that one of the main reasons they are thinking about billing individuals an $18 a year fee, it's not really to collect money from the individuals, it's to discourage bots, to discourage fake accounts. Because if the fake account creators have to pay money, they're not going to create it. They will be disincentivized. So, the same thing here. Anyone can set up an @gmail account for free. So, be suspicious of that @gmail account right away because fraudsters are having to create new accounts all the time. And if they had to pay for a new email each time they had to do it, it would, it would cut into their profits, right? So, so be suspect of that. So you'll notice this email address does not match Joanne's real email address over here, joanne.toucher@transactly.com. And here they even copied the head. If I were to open this up, this is a screenshot, but if I were to click there and open that up, you'd see that I was copied, sander@sanderscott.com. It's showing that I was copied on this email when I really wasn't. I do a lot of warnings with my clients. I tell all my clients this. I say you will never receive an email from me giving you wiring instructions or my assistant. And I advise when using a wire, call the title company directly. Make sure that you're talking to the title company. My personal recommendation is to get the wiring instructions from the title company personally. Walk in and I say, excuse my language, but I say get your ass in the seat at your bank and have the bank wire the money directly. Now, why not just use a cashier's check? Well, cashier's checks— timing is really important in closing transactions, and cashier's checks take a lot longer because they're trying to avoid fraud. With cashier's checks, they take a lot longer to, to fund in an account. So if, if done properly and cautiously, uh, wire transfers are very, very secure.. It's just that fraudsters like this figure out a way to get ahead and get in between. So, so let's read the email and see a little bit of the strategies. And this is why it's really important to pay attention anytime there's anything to do with wiring money. Be careful and read carefully. So here it is. We are cleared to close. It is important that you wire the closing funds to the accounts today. In order to avoid a delay in closing. So firstly, a title company will never insert that much urgency. Right there, a red flag should go up. That if there's this huge sense of urgency, do it now, must be done right away, that's always going to work in favor of the fraudster. Title companies are not in that big of a rush. So that's a first clue. Okay. We have been experiencing delays recently with wired funds occasionally taking days to hit their closing account. That's, that's just not true. Wires, once done, don't take days. Okay. It is in our policy to have funds available for disbursement at the time of closing, so we advise you to have funds sent as soon as today, solely to save time and avoid closing delays. So, you know, there's— now we're starting to get into some language nuances that I find interesting, and I don't know exactly how to articulate it myself, but this just doesn't seem like an email that would be sent from someone who lives in Northern Michigan. They would be phrasing this a little bit differently. I hope this will be convenient for you. Comma, I will send the wiring instructions for the closing account upon receipt of your reply, comma, capital, please confirm the receipt of this email by replying to this email, comma, so I can attach the trust account instructions to take care of the transaction. There's no period here. And then if there is anything else you need, please let me know. So The other thing is, is that this writer does not have the greatest command of the English language that you would expect. Now, obviously, I, I'm a recovering English teacher. I can be a little bit more picky probably than your average bear when it comes to someone's writing. However, those are things to, to keep in mind that often these wire transfer fraudsters They live in a foreign country. That's what makes investigating these and getting to the bottom of it so challenging for law enforcement authorities. So they're, they're not going to have the same language. They're not going to write in the same way that someone in Northern Michigan or near wherever you live. They're going to write slightly differently. So you want to pay attention to that whenever you get an email about wiring instructions, automatically be suspicious, just automatically. Once your suspicions are raised, then check out the email address. But the biggest thing is, how do you avoid wire fraud? Again, it's not like there's an electronic pulse here, the, this transaction's en route and somehow it's intercepted. That's not how it works. What they do is they are looking at Zillow, they're hacking in different ways and finding out information. They know that a transaction is about to take place. And they want to get in ahead of the, the actual wire transfer and fool you into thinking you're wiring money to the title company when you're really wiring it to their offshore account and your money's going to disappear. So as long as you actually get the wiring instructions directly from the title company and take those to the bank that you're wiring the money from, and they would verify those. And then if your ass is in the seat, like I explained earlier, and you're having the bank send those off, if an error takes place, then the bank is on the hook with you. Okay. It's not just you having been fooled and responding to an email. In this case, what, what, what occurred to me was there was an opportunity here for law enforcement to get involved because Here we could have set up a sting. Typically, previous wire fraud, uh, attempts have a link or have something that you would go to now that, that here, go to this link, wire money now. Okay. This one has, is saying, please respond and I'll send you the link. So the, what thought occurred to me is that if we could give law enforcement a heads up on this, then they could come in and insert themselves and pretend to be my client and reply to that. And perhaps that would assist them in being able to track down this fraudster and do what law enforcement does at that point. And so my next video, I'm going to talk about what do you do if you receive an email like this, or God forbid that you actually have fallen victim to a wire fraud. What should you do? And, um, so tune into that. I'll put a link to that in above here for you to see that if you receive an email like this and you are suspicious ahead of time, highly encourage you to report it. The more we make this wire fraud thing, um, transparent and raise awareness, the less likely anyone is to fall victim of it. You've worked really, really hard for your money. And so we don't want to give it away to some fraudster. All right. Thanks a lot for tuning in. Appreciate it. I'm Sander Scott, your full-service realtor with Net Real Estate.
