Real estate wire fraud attempts are on the rise

Nearly three-quarters of the 2022 requests for help from wire fraud protection company CertifID came from consumers, primarily resulting from real estate-related scams.

By type of request received, 41% were from buyer cash-to-close transactions, 24% involved mortgage payoffs, and 11% involved the net proceeds sent to the seller.

"Attacks on real estate transactions represent a growing payments risk that isn't being properly addressed," said Thomas Cronkright, co-founder and executive chairman of CertifID and owner of Sun Title Agency, in a press release. "With increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics, from fake property ads to seemingly legitimate payment requests, more needs to be done to educate and protect customers from payment fraud."

CertifID was founded because Sun Title was twice victimized by business email compromise scams, the most common way the fraudsters are able to obtain the consumer's information.

The average wire fraud loss for consumer transactions last year was $106,557, the company said.

"Real estate transactions represent some of the largest transactions a consumer will ever make, so losses due to fraud can be devastating," said Tyler Adams, co-founder and CEO of CertifID. "Consumers need to understand the importance of protecting their transactions; they need to be more aware and educated on how to recognize fraud; and they need to know what immediate next steps to take if disaster strikes and recovery is necessary."

Real estate scams resulted in $893 million of losses in 2020 and 2021, two of the best years ever for mortgage transactions, according to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network data the company cited.

More recent information published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center — IC3 for short — found that business email compromise had the second highest financial losses by scam type at $2.74 billion from 21,832 victims. Real estate scams were eighth at just under $397 million, with 11,727 consumers reporting this kind of fraud.

In 2021, BEC crimes resulted in $2.4 billion of losses, while real estate fraud accounted for $350.3 million.

Phishing scams had the most victims last year, with 300,497 complaints, but the financial losses were much lower at $52.1 million