Beware of scammers mimicking escrow agents when wiring funds!!!

[Brandy Fujii]

Im scheduled to close on a rental property May 7th. Everything is on time except the appraisal, which has been completed but not out for my viewing yet. This is my second rental property that I’m purchasing in Ohio, using the same realtor, same lender, same insurance, same escrow company. Last week I got an email from escrow with the wiring instructions. Then a few days later I get another email from the same escrow agent, with the same name and email with my realtor cc’d on the new thread. So I thought it was legit. She was asking me to wire the funds at that time “for a smooth transaction and any excess funds would be returned”. I ignored it and asked my realtor about it. My realtor stated that the escrow company is just letting me know. Then they emailed me again yesterday asking if I could wire the funds before closing. I got my preliminary closing disclosure from my lender yesterday so I thought it was all good to wire. The other thing that was suspicious was that the scammer kept emailing/texting me to let them know once I’ve wired it, the third thing was they last minute sent an “alternate” escrow bank account number. I was literally at the bank with the teller and I called the number that was on the email but it just rang. So I told the teller to hold off and I walked out of line. I called my realtor to tell her and she called the manager of the escrow company to find out that no one from escrow emailed me anything and that it was a scammer. I was so thankful that the wire didn’t go through and I listened to my gut feeling. Even the phone calls were under the escrow agents name, the email was the exact same as well, except when I clicked on the name a different email address appeared. My realtor informed me that this happens all the time but it is extremely more prevalent nowadays since there’s been so many real estate transactions... so just be aware of these damn scammers!