Brokers: Beware of Email Scams

A local sheriff's office has contacted us about email scams that are targeting business owners, real estate agents, title agents and attorneys. As there has been a significant increase in these scams locally, we will be sharing this information with your agents in the near future.

ATTN: Business Owners, Real Estate Agents, Title Agents & Attorneys

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Financial Crimes Unit has seen a recent increase in cases involving email compromises specifically involving the interception of wire transfer instructions. In this scheme, the business owner/attorney/title agent, is involved in a transaction of either sending money to a vendor or to another title company for a real estate transaction. 

The suspects hack into the victim’s email account and create rules within the email account that causes the wire instructions to go into another mailbox besides the inbox. Once they receive the wire instructions, the suspects then create a new email address that looks very similar to the real email address and then sends a new email with wire instructions directing the money to a different account.

For example, if the real email address was “abc123@gmail.com”, they would create a new email of “abc123@gmail.co” or if the real email address was scammer@gmail.com, they would create a new email of scamrner@gmail.com (replacing the “m” with “r” and “n” to make it look like an “m”). Once the funds are transferred to the suspect’s account, the funds are almost immediately withdrawn or transferred out.

In order to avoid becoming a victim to this scam, the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office recommends the following:

1. Make sure you're using a secure password and change it every 30 days.

2. Check the rules on your email accounts frequently to make sure that nothing has been changed directing your emails to your trash or spam folders.

3. If you know you are going to be receiving wire instructions, please contact the person who will be sending the instructions via phone and verify what email address the instructions should be coming from.

4. Once you receive the wire instructions, contact the person you are sending the funds to via phone and verify the account number and bank.

5. Once the wire transfer is sent, contact the receiver via phone and make sure the funds were received.

6. Do not rely solely on the banks to recall the wire transfer and return the funds to your account regardless of what you are told by the local bank employee. Please make a report to your bank and the bank that the wire transfer was sent to. Insist that a fraud case be opened and request a bank case number.

7. And remember, the longer you wait to report the fraudulent wire transfer, the less likely it will be that law enforcement can recover any of the funds. 

If, by chance, you become victim to this scam, make an immediate report to www.ic3.gov and contact your local law enforcement agency.

Source: Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office