How to Protect Your Closing Money From Wire Fraud
Protecting your closing money from wire fraud takes one unbreakable rule: never act on wiring instructions that arrive by email. ClozeEZ never holds a dollar of your transaction, because a licensed title or escrow company does, and that escrow officer is who you verify every account number with, by phone, at a number you looked up yourself, before any money moves. The scam this defeats cost real estate an estimated $275 million in 2025: criminals compromise or convincingly spoof an email account in the transaction, then send urgent, official-looking 'updated wiring instructions' days before closing. By-owner buyers and sellers are prime targets precisely because no agent is watching the email thread, and the defense costs thirty seconds.
Understand the scam you're defending against
The criminal watches a real transaction, often by quietly compromising an email account belonging to someone in it, learns the property, the names, and the closing date, then emails the buyer or the seller from an address one character off from the real one, or from the real hacked account itself. The message is calm and procedural: wiring instructions have been updated, here is the new account. The money wires to the criminal's account and is moved out within hours. Everything about the email looks right, because everything in it except the account number came from the real transaction.
Set up the phone rule on day one of escrow
When escrow opens, look up your title company's main number from its website or your first printed packet, call it, reach your escrow officer, and save that number in your phone. From this moment, that saved number is the only channel money instructions travel through. Tell the officer plainly: 'I will call you at this number to verify anything involving money, and I will not act on emailed instructions.' Real escrow officers will thank you; this is their rule too.
Treat every change of instructions as fraud until proven otherwise
Legitimate title companies do not change wiring instructions by email at the last minute; treat any message doing so as an alarm. Do not reply to it, do not call any number printed in it (the criminal answers that one), and do not let urgency move you. Call your saved number, read the account details aloud, and get a verbal confirmation. Then, and only then, act.
Protect both directions of the money
Sellers: when escrow asks where to send your proceeds, deliver your account details by phone at the saved number or in person at signing, never by email. Buyers in your transaction face the mirror risk with their earnest money and closing funds, so say one sentence to them early: 'The title company will never email either of us new wiring instructions; verify everything by phone.' In an agentless deal, you are each other's second set of eyes.
Know the first-hour playbook if money moves wrong
Speed is everything: banks can sometimes claw back a wire in the first hours, rarely after a day. Immediately: call your bank and request a recall and fraud freeze on the wire; call the receiving bank's fraud department; call your escrow officer at the saved number; file at ic3.gov (the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, whose recovery team has the best odds when engaged fast); and call local police for a report number. Have this list before you need it, because the hour you'd spend finding it is the hour that matters.
Related questions
Why are by-owner transactions targeted more?
Because the criminals' hardest problem is a vigilant human noticing the fake email, and FSBO deals have fewer humans watching the thread. That is a solvable problem: the phone rule replaces the missing watcher with a procedure, and a procedure never gets busy or distracted.
Is a cashier's check safer than a wire?
For some closing payments, escrow may accept a cashier's check, which removes the wire-interception risk but introduces its own logistics and can slow disbursement. Ask your escrow officer what they accept. For seller proceeds, a verified wire to an account you confirmed by phone is standard and safe; the danger was never the wire, it was the unverified instructions.
What does a fake escrow email actually look like?
Like a real one. That is the entire trick: correct property address, correct names, correct closing date, professional signature block, often a domain one letter off (escrowtitle-az.com vs escrowtitleaz.com) or the genuine account of a hacked party. You cannot reliably spot the fake by reading it, which is why the rule is to never act on emailed instructions at all, not to read them more carefully.