BAY CITY, MI — Michigan real estate officials are warning home buyers and sellers of a nasty scam that has already milked $25,000 from a buyer in Midland.
The scam starts with an innocent email to Realtors saying they have a buyer interested in some properties. When the Realtor clicks the link, it gives the scammer an opportunity to hack their email accounts. From there, they seek information about upcoming transactions and then pose as a title company asking the buyer to wire in their closing costs. Instead of going to the title company, the money, most of the time, ends up somewhere overseas.
“This is a very sophisticated group. They know what they’re doing,” said Gordon Hall, a Realtor with Remax of Midland. “I saw copies of all the emails and they looked very legitimate, they include all the right lingo of real estate — one of the emails included the right name of the home inspector.”
The Midland County Realtor Association filed a report with the Midland Police Department Wednesday, April 22. But at this point, Hall said, the money is gone. Police officials linked emails being routed through an IP address in South Africa, Hall said.
The buyer was not able to purchase the home, the sellers lost a sale and the selling office lost a closing.
It’s not unusual to wire money when closing on a house today, but buyers need to be cautious, said Jennifer Stefanski, an escrow officer at Superior Title and Settlement in Bangor Township.
“It’s very common, actually,” she said. “What’s happening is they hack into the emails we send to Realtors and manipulate the routing and account numbers, but everything else looks exactly like how we would send it.”
Bob Adamowski, president and chief executive officer of the Bay County Realtor Association, said some area Realtors have had similar phishing scams, but thankfully no one has taken the bait.
“We’re being very proactive about communicating with our agents to let them know of these scams,” Adamowski said.
Before buyers transfer any money, he recommends they contact their agent by phone — not through email — to confirm the correct account and routing numbers. He’s also asking his 175 agent members to frequently change their email passwords. The scammers are targeting Gmail email accounts, he said.