HELP! 1st deal, guess not

[Frank Gade]

My wife and I were scheduled to close on our first long term rental today, we have literally signed all the paperwork and then our title company goes to check that we have sent the closing costs to the bank to ensure that we have sent the funds.  My wife wired the funds to what we thought was the title company the day before and the funds cleared this morning.  (Wired on thursday cleared friday - today),  We in-fact wired the funds to a fraudulant account/person that had changes in only the email address of our title company, my mortgage broker, and realtor.  All of the other information that came from that email was correct minus the emails.  The title companies phone number was correct.  As of right now we have contacted our bank, our lender, several police departments, and the liquor store.   Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

[Aaron Byrne]

So sorry to hear about this. Unfortunately, the real estate industry has seen a marked increase in fraudulent activity over the past couple years. While there is not much advice I can offer for this situation, my best wishes to you and your wife and I hope you are able to recover the dollars. 

For the benefit of the forum, things to watch out for when dealing with scammers are: 1) double-check the email address used to send the email; 2) always be cautious of any instructions sent over email and not from a secure link/source; 3) read through the message in its entirety to spot any formatting errors or duplicate email signatures, etc.; 4) when in doubt, call the person in question using a number found online/another source to see if they indeed sent the message; 5) ALWAYS call to confirm wire instructions right before transferring funds, even if you called to confirm them before.