Why Do Sophisticated CyberScammers Pick on the Real Estate Industry?
I guess it only makes sense that if you are going to steal money from someone, you do it at a time when they have the most access to cash that most people will ever have: when they are spending their savings or the proceeds of a big mortgage loan to buy a home! Go big or go home? For the cyber scammers, they strategize to get at BOTH.
Many of our clients are still a little skeptical and not comfortable with all the new security systems and encryption we have implemented to have them safely wire closing proceeds to our trust account for the purchase of their homes. As much as we try to explain it, I think the best and most graphic explanation I’ve heard may be this news report from the West Coast on a closing there:
This young family from Oregon is like most Americans . . . it is just hard to believe that there is no remedy! No way to recover your money once you have it wired from your account. But the amount of banking and law enforcement resources required to apprehend these often international criminals and recover stolen money is so high everyone from local law enforcement to the FBI can only take a report, send it to a data base, and do nothing more.
To do their evil, the Scammers generally require a human element, a weakness, in order to successfully victimize those whose life savings are wiped out. Realtor Magazine makes some excellent suggestions to educate the public and make us all aware of “red flags” and good practices that can help keep our money safe:
https://magazine.realtor/daily-news/2018/12/11/more-phishing-scams-reported-here-s-what-you-can-do
Make sure to click the links inside the two articles in today’s blog to get more helpful information.
Stay safe out there!
