WIRING INSTRUCTION POLICY:  Fraud involving wiring instructions is unfortunately epidemic in our industry today.  Thieves send a buyer or seller fake wiring instructions that wires the money to the thief’s own bank account, not to the title company.  Usually that fraud is conducted through email, though sometimes they actually phone the victim, and they can very convincingly portray the attorney, the title company, or a lender representative.  Sometimes, they can even correspond with you via real-time emails, having a dialog with you and answering your email questions right away.  They can be exceptionally convincing. 

 

Therefore, ALL CLIENTS MUST ACCEPT AND AGREE TO THIS OFFICE’S POLICY TO PREVENT WIRE FRAUD:

 

• Under federal law, you are required to wire funds for all real estate transactions if you need $50,000 or more to close.  For example, when a buyer has to bring $50,000 or more to purchase the property, or when a seller has to contribute $50,000 or more of their own funds (in the rare occasion when the sale price doesn’t cover what they owe, called “selling short”).  

• If a party requires less than $50,000 to close on their purchase or sale, they may instead pay via cashier’s check made out to the name of the title company hosting the closing.  But wires are still acceptable, even for amounts under $50,000. 

• THIS OFFICE WILL NEVER SEND YOU WIRING INSTRUCTIONS via any method. 

• If you must wire money, you must CALL THE TITLE COMPANY directly and request wiring instructions from them.  We can provide you with the title company’s phone number to make that request so you are confident you are calling for legitimate wiring instructions.

• After you receive your wiring instructions, whether they were emailed or faxed to you, or whether you downloaded them from a website or via an embedded link in a title company email, YOU MUST THEN CALL THE TITLE COMPANY BACK AND VERBALLY CONFIRM THE WIRING INSTRUCTION DETAILS. 

• To summarize:

  • If you need wiring instructions, you will call the title company to obtain them yourself.

  • Once you receive them, via whatever method they use, you must then phone that title company back directly and confirm the contents of the instructions you received.

  • Do NOT use a phone number included on the wiring instructions, only use the independent phone number you receive from me.

We appreciate that is process is somewhat unwieldy and may be inconvenient, but once wired funds are sent, you will probably never get that money back again.  Once wired, if you wire using fraudulent wiring instructions, that money is almost certainly gone forever.  So be vigilant and always make those two phone calls.