She Lost $255,000 In A Housing Scam After Receiving An Email From What Appeared To Be Her Title Company
Buying a home is already a grueling process—and it’s made even worse if you find out that you’ve placed your life’s savings into the hands of a criminal.
There is a growing sector of organized crime that involves tricking homebuyers into redirecting their hard-earned money to fraudsters.
That’s exactly what happened to one unlucky couple in West Virginia, who thought they were securing their dream home but instead fell for a housing scam.
After months of house-hunting, Raegan Bartlo and her husband Michael finally found a house they loved in a quaint community just a few hours away from Washington, D.C.
Days before they closed on the house, Bartlo received an email that looked exactly like the other emails sent from her title company.
Bartlo described the email, which read something along the lines of: “Congratulations, we’ll be ready to close on Wednesday, and all you have to do is go ahead and wire your funds, and that way, all you have to do is come in and sign.”
So, she followed the wiring instructions. But on closing day, she got an email informing her that the signing would be delayed from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
When she called her realtor to inquire about the change, she discovered that the time of the closing had remained the same.
“She called me back right away saying, ‘Your closing is still at 4 [p.m.] today. You haven’t been talking to the title lawyer.’ At that point, my whole world fell apart because I had already wired all of the down payment money for our house,” Bartlo said.
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“And that was about $255,000. And so, our nest egg, our savings, everything at that moment was gone.”
Bartlo has spent her career in the finance industry and online security. It just goes to show that anyone can become a victim of sophisticated fraud, so it’s important to stay vigilant in order to avoid falling for traps.
According to Tom Cronkright, the founder of CertifID, a technology company that helps prevent wire fraud, these incidents are happening every single day. Cronkright started CertifID after becoming a victim in 2015. He lost $180,000.
Global organized crime groups and cartels are highly skilled at hacking into real estate companies, law firms, and financial institutions to get all the information they need to run their schemes.
“The email, that includes the payment request with wiring instructions, isn’t coming out of the blue. It’s tacked on to a thread of emails that they’ve been having for two, three, four weeks,” said Cronkright.
“And now, they’re just saying, ‘Well, instead of bringing a check tomorrow for closing, we need you to send a wire, and here’s why.'”
Most people never recover their losses. Since Bartlo notified her bank immediately, the account was frozen before all the money could be withdrawn. She was left with about half of the $255,000.
After losing most of her down payment, she was forced to take out money from a retirement account, and she had to pay a hefty penalty on the withdrawal.
So, if you’re buying or selling a home, make sure to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity.
More About:Human Interest