ALTA’s Warning About Industry Cyber Crime
The American Land Title Association has come out with an article warning Realtors and mortgage companies and title companies how to avoid the most common type of cyber crime in their industry which is deed fraud which is wire transfer fraud where a scammer will get into an email conversation between buyers and sellers and lenders and Realtors and give fake wire transfer instructions to a buyer that’s wiring funds and they’ll basically copy the email signature of a title company with their logos their phone numbers all the details and say when you’re ready to send the money for your closing for your down payment or for your purchase here is our wire instructions and they give you a bank account and a routing number and you wire the money there and they come to find out it was a fake email.

Current Industry Solutions and Their Limitations
They’re talking about all kinds of real estate training agent training verification software all these tools used to reduce the risk well we’ve talked about this for over a year there’s a very simple way to reduce the risk is the realtor what they would want to do simply tell your buyer to not send the full transfer.

The Test Transfer Solution Explained
Without doing a test transfer what does that mean well if the buyer sends over $10 $100 to those wiring instructions as a test transfer then you go to the company in person or get the phone number from the internet not from an email and call them up and say hey did you get my transfer over $100 yes we did great now you know that that title or that wire transfer information is correct then you can go back to your bank and say send the funds using the exact same wiring instructions I used for that $100 because you know that’s right and that would save you from a lot of headache from losing all your money on a house by sending it to the wrong place.

Simple Implementation Strategy
It’s very simple to do just send a small test transfer verify it was received by the right people and then use that same information for the other one you don’t need to use any kind of complicated you know verification software training or anything else just make sure the real estate agent tells the buyer or the title company or the mortgage company do a test transfer first verify with us we got it and then you’ll be in good shape for the rest of the money.