Misdirected Transfers in Financial Fraud
One of the scariest things we’re seeing in financial fraud are these misdirected transfers. It could be a title company doing a real estate closing. It could be a purchase from a company. We had one a couple weeks ago with a fire department. A municipal fire agency was purchasing a fire truck, and they sent their money to pay for the fire truck to the wrong place. How does this happen? It happens where hackers will break into a system or an email of a company. It could be a small company.

Vulnerabilities in Email Chains
It doesn’t have to be any of the companies involved in the transaction. It could be an associated company, like a home inspector or even a contractor. On these email chains, they’ll have all the information about an upcoming purchase. For example, in a real estate transaction, there’s lots of people involved in that transaction—home inspectors, mortgage brokers, insurance companies, utility companies, electrical, cable TV. Any of these companies involved in the closing know when the closing is happening.

How Hackers Exploit the Information
A lot of these emails are CCed to all these people so everybody knows when the closing is happening, how much it is, and what the details are. These hackers will gather up all this information and, at some point, they’ll say, “You know what? We’re going to attack this transaction.” What they do is, when the time is right, they send an email to the person paying the money saying, “Here’s where you send the money. Here’s your wire transfer.”

The Impact of Fraudulent Transactions
It looked like it came from the right place. They have all the right names, logos, and information. The poor buyer sends their money to a hacker. It’s overseas, and it’s gone. The same thing can happen in business. If you’re buying a large piece of equipment, the hackers will monitor it. Maybe the supplier’s some low-level tech person. They get the information, send the buyer the wire transfer information, and it’s wrong. This cybercrime is very, very difficult.

Prevention: The Importance of Test Payments
There’s an easy way to prevent it. If you just send a test payment before you send any big amounts by wire transfer—send 100 bucks, 50 bucks, whatever it is—and make sure that it goes through properly to the right place. For the kind of money we’re talking about, it’s very important to prevent it. If you don’t prevent it, you could lose all your money for your down payment on a house. If you’re a business, you lose your purchase of the equipment.

Real-Life Consequences and Community Impact
In the case of that fire department, that was money they had saved up for years to buy a new piece of apparatus. Without that, it put their community at risk. So do this test anytime you send a large transaction. You can check out our website, verifyescrow.com, to give you instructions. There’s no cost. It’s something that just is a free checklist of how to do a large transaction.

Final Advice and Resources
You want to send a test wire transfer before you send anything large. Then verify with the actual recipient that they got that small payment before you send the whole amount. If you have any questions, you can reach our consultation division at actualhuman.com. Glad to talk to you.