Northern
Title

Closing day should be one of the best days of the home buying process. You've made it through inspections, financing, and paperwork, and now it's time to get your keys. Unfortunately, that excitement is exactly what scammers count on.

Wire fraud targeting real estate closings has grown into one of the most common and most costly scams in the country. Buyers can lose their entire down payment in minutes, and in most cases that money is gone for good. The FBI has flagged real estate wire fraud as a growing threat for years, and the losses nationwide are measured in the hundreds of millions annually. This isn't a rare, far-off risk. It's something every buyer, seller, and agent needs to understand before funds ever change hands.

Here's what you need to know to protect yourself, and how Northern Title Company works to keep your transaction secure.

How A Wire Fraud Scam Works

A few days before closing, a buyer receives an email that looks like it's from their title company, real estate agent, or lender. The email includes new wiring instructions and asks the buyer to send funds to a different account. The message often looks legitimate, complete with real logos, real names, and a tone that matches previous emails in the thread.

In reality, a scammer has hacked into an email account somewhere in the transaction, whether it belongs to the buyer, the agent, the lender, or the title company, and is quietly watching the thread for the right moment to strike. Once the timing is right, the scammer sends new instructions that redirect the wire to an account they control. Because the email often comes from an address that looks nearly identical to the real one, or from an account that has actually been compromised, it's easy to miss the difference at a glance.

Once the buyer wires money to the fraudulent account, it is usually moved through several accounts and withdrawn within hours. By the time anyone realizes what happened, there's often very little that can be done to recover the funds.

Warning Signs To Watch For

• Any last-minute change to wiring instructions, especially by email
• Pressure to act quickly, keep the change quiet, or send funds immediately
• Slightly altered email addresses that look correct at a glance, such as a swapped letter or a different domain ending
• Requests to confirm sensitive account information over email
• Instructions that arrive outside of normal business hours or right before a deadline
• A sudden change in tone or urgency compared to earlier emails in the same thread

Scammers are patient. They may spend weeks monitoring a transaction before ever sending a fraudulent email, waiting until closing is close enough that buyers are focused on moving day, not double-checking every message.

What To Do Before You Wire Any Money

• Call your escrow officer directly using a phone number you already have on file, never a number listed in the email itself.
• Verify wiring instructions by phone before sending any funds, every single time, even if you've wired money to this company before.
• Be suspicious of any email urging urgency, secrecy, or a same-day deadline.
• Confirm the transaction is progressing as expected with your real estate agent, since they're often looped in on timing and can help spot something unusual.
• Send a small test wire first if your bank allows it, and confirm receipt before sending the full amount.
• Trust your instincts. If something feels off, it's worth the extra phone call to make sure.

How Northern Title Helps Protect You

Our escrow officers in Northern Utah and nearby areas will never change wiring instructions through email alone, and we encourage every client to verify instructions by phone before sending funds. Our closing instructions are provided directly and consistently, and we train our team to recognize the red flags of a wire fraud attempt before it becomes a problem for our clients.

We also encourage buyers and sellers to loop in their real estate agent and lender if anything about a wiring request seems unusual. Fraud attempts often show up in more than one place at once, and having a few extra sets of eyes on a transaction makes it much harder for a scammer to succeed.

What To Do If You Think You've Been Targeted

If you've already sent a wire and suspect fraud, time matters. Call your bank immediately and request a wire recall, then contact your title company and local law enforcement. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center also accepts reports of this kind of fraud, and reporting quickly gives you the best possible chance of recovering funds.