Hackers prey on home buyers, with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake
https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/hackers-prey-on-home-buyers-with-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-at-stake/2017/10/30/0379dcb4-bd87-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html But if you're buying a house and heading to settlement, you still may be far more vulnerable than you think to the fastest-growing form of real estate cybercrime in the United States: thefts of home-purchase money wired to complete closing transactions. The scam generally works like this: Hackers find an opening into a title company's or realty agent's email account, track upcoming home purchases scheduled for settlements -- the pricier the better -- then assume the identity of the title agency person handling the transaction. Days or sometimes weeks before the settlement, the scammer poses as the title or escrow agent whose email accounts they've hijacked and instructs the home buyer to wire the funds needed to close -- often hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes far more -- to the criminals' own bank accounts, not the title or escrow company's legitimate accounts. The criminals then withdraw the money and vanish. - - - --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): https://www.vortex.com/lauren Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com Google Issues Mailing List: https://vortex.com/google-issues Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 --- Impeach Trump --- _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list https://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad
