You get an email. That is how it starts. The mail is supposedly sent by an escrow company and instructs you where to wire your escrow funds.
The con artist prepares a website that matches the appearance of the company you are used to working with, to lull any suspicions.
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You get an email. That is how it starts. The mail is supposedly sent by an escrow company and instructs you where to wire your escrow funds. The con artist prepares a website that matches the appearance of the company you are used to working with, to lull any suspicions. Spoofing tactics are used to give phone numbers, websites and email addresses a familiar appearance – but there is always one character off in the address.
Usually, victims automatically wire the funds over, and are none the wiser until communications with the real escrow company reveal that the funds were never received – or asked for! By then the fraudsters have already siphoned the funds into an offshore account and that is all she wrote. There are, of course, options to get your money back, from the bank if note from the scam artists. But it is ever so much easier to implement countermeasures to begin with.
The first, elementary, step to protect yourself from this type of fraud is to review the original documents you received from the lending institution and call the listed contacts there to verify any wiring instructions you might receive. Never, under any circumstances, click on email or text links, let alone send money online, before you double check any wire instructions with an actual human on the other side of a phone line specified in the original paper documentation you received.
Another warning sign to keep an eye out for is any email asking for authorization to change wiring instructions you had previously received. Once again, verification versus a human agent before and after you wire funds is the best proof against such frauds.
