Resources
Moving money at closing
Somewhere between the contract and the closing table you will be asked to send the largest sum of money you have ever moved. Criminals know that, they know roughly when it happens, and they read email. This page is how you make sure the money goes where it is supposed to go, and what to do in the first hour if you think it did not.
How it actually happens
It is almost never a stranger with a wild story. Someone gets into an email account belonging to a party in the transaction, whether that is a title company, a lender, an agent, or you, and then simply waits and reads. They learn your closing date, the amount, and the names of everyone involved.
Then, a day or two before closing, you get an email that looks entirely normal. Right names, right property, right amount, right tone. It says the wiring instructions have changed, or attaches them for the first time. The account belongs to the criminal. The money leaves the country within hours.
Nothing about the email looks wrong, which is the entire point. So the defense cannot be “spot the fake.” It has to be a habit you follow every single time.
The size of it
$269.2m
Lost to cyber-enabled fraud in Tennessee in 2025, across 16,261 complaints. The state ranks 19th in the country.
$275.1m
Lost nationally in real estate specifically, across 12,368 complaints.
58%
Of the money reported to the FBI’s recovery team in 2025 was frozen before it disappeared, $679m of $1.16bn. That number is the reason to call immediately.
Source: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Annual Report.
The habit
Five things. They take about ten minutes in total and they are the difference.
- 1
Get the wiring instructions in person if you can
At the title company, or handed to you. If that is not practical, the phone call below does the same job. - 2
Call and verify, on a number you found yourself
Not the number in the email. Not the number in the signature block. A number from the company’s own website that you typed in yourself, or one you already had. Read the account number back to them digit by digit and have them confirm it out loud. - 3
Treat any change to wiring instructions as fraud
Legitimate wiring instructions almost never change. If you get a message saying they have, assume it is an attack until a phone call on a known number proves otherwise. This single rule stops most of these. - 4
Call again after you send it
Confirm the money arrived and landed in the right account. This is how a problem gets found in hours instead of at the closing table. - 5
Call me before you move anything
Any time, about any amount. I would rather have a hundred unnecessary phone calls than one of these.
If you think it has already happened
Do not wait to be sure. Do these three things in the next hour, in this order.
- Call your bank and ask them to attempt a recall of the wire. Use the words “fraudulent wire transfer” and ask them to contact the receiving bank.
- Report it at ic3.gov, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. This is what puts the recovery team on it, and it is the step people skip.
- Call me. I will get the title company and the lender on it from this end while you are still on with the bank.
Money that has just moved can often be frozen. Money that moved last week usually cannot. Speed is the whole game, so make the call before you have finished working out whether you are overreacting.
This page is general information about how these frauds work, not legal or financial advice, and no page can promise you a recovery. Your bank, your title company and the FBI are the ones who act on a live incident. My job is to make sure you know to call them the same hour.