The Email With Your Wiring Instructions Is the Most Dangerous Message of Your Whole Purchase

Somewhere in the last week before closing, you will get an email with wire instructions. If that email is fake and you follow it, the money is usually gone, and there is usually no insurance that brings it back.

I'm Lesley The Realtor, and at Dream Homes Minnesota this is the one part of a closing where we repeat ourselves on purpose. Here is what the federal numbers look like and what to actually do.

1. The scale, from the FBI's own report

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center 2025 annual report logged 12,368 real estate fraud complaints and $275.1 million in reported losses, a 58% jump in a single year. Of related business email compromise losses, 86% moved by wire transfer.

Business email compromise overall ran 24,768 complaints and $3.05 billion. Total reported losses across all categories hit $20.877 billion, up 26% and the highest in the center's 25-year history.

2. How the scam actually works

Nobody hacks a bank. Someone gets into an email account, often a small one belonging to a party in the transaction, and reads quietly for weeks. They learn your closing date, your closer's name, the property address, the amount you owe.

Then, two days before closing, you get a message that looks exactly like the real thread. Same signature. Same tone. Correct address. New account number, with a line about a last-minute change.

The FBI's 2025 report includes a case where the compromised email appeared to come from the title company itself.

3. The one rule that defeats it

Never take wire instructions from an email. Not from an attachment, not from a PDF, not from a reply in a thread you have been using all month.

Call the closing company on a phone number you got somewhere other than that email, and have them read the account and routing numbers to you out loud. Read them back. Do this even if you already have instructions you believe are real.

4. Get the phone number before you need it

Do this at the start, not at the end. The week your purchase agreement is signed, ask your closer for their direct number and write it down somewhere that is not your inbox.

By the time a fake email arrives, every phone number in your email is suspect, including the one in the signature of the fake message.

5. The warning signs, in order of how often they show up

A change in account details at the last minute. Urgency, including a claim that your closing will be delayed if you do not send immediately. An instruction to keep the change quiet. A reply-to address that differs by one character from the one you know. A request to send to a bank in a different state than your closing company.

Any one of those means stop and call. All of them together means stop, call, and tell your agent.

6. Move fast if it already happened

Call your bank immediately and ask for a wire recall. Then call the FBI at ic3.gov and file a complaint, and call your local police. The federal Financial Fraud Kill Chain can sometimes freeze a domestic wire, but only within a narrow window, measured in hours and days.

Do not spend the first hour feeling embarrassed. The hour is worth more than the embarrassment.

7. Sellers are targets too, and often the bigger one

Everything above applies to your proceeds going out. On a median Twin Cities sale, the September median was $395,000, a seller's net wire is frequently a six-figure transfer, which makes it a larger prize than most buyers' down payments.

If you are selling, verify the account you are receiving into, by phone, with your closer, before closing day. And be skeptical of any email asking you to change where your proceeds go.

8. What we do on our side

We tell every client the same thing in writing: we will never email you wire instructions, and if you get wire instructions that appear to come from us, call us before you do anything. Ask any agent you work with to put that in writing too.

Short FAQ

Is a cashier's check safer? It removes the fake-wire problem, though some closing companies limit how much they accept that way. Ask your closer what they allow.

Will my homeowner's insurance cover this? Generally no. Some title companies and banks carry coverage that may apply in narrow circumstances. Do not plan on it.

Does using a big national bank protect me? No. The fraud happens in email, before the money ever reaches a bank.

What if the email comes from my own agent's address? That is exactly the case to be most careful about, because a compromised account sends real email from a real address. Call, do not reply.

Next steps

If you have a closing in the next 30 days, call us and we will get you your closer's direct phone number now, before anyone needs it, and put in writing what we will and will not ever send you by email.

Lesley The Realtor | REALTOR® | Bridge Realty
651-661-4770
[email protected]
www.dreamhomesminnesota.com