Someone is going to contact you about money. Here is how to know if it is real.
Buying or selling a home puts a large amount of money and personal information in motion, on a schedule anyone can guess. This page covers what tends to arrive during a transaction, the rules that stop it, and what to do in the first hour if money has already left.
Three rules that protect your money at closing
The most dangerous moment in a home purchase is the wire at closing, because the amount is large and the money only moves once. These three rules cover it.
Treat any change to payment or wiring instructions as fraud until you confirm it by phone.
Legitimate changes almost never happen. A sudden change is usually the scam itself.
Call back on a number you already had. Never the one in the message.
Use a number from your signed paperwork or one you saved earlier. The number in a message can be fake even when everything around it looks real.
Slow down. Urgency is the scam, not your closing.
Send it today or you lose the house is the pressure they want you to feel. A real closing can wait for one phone call.
Never read account or wire numbers aloud
If someone calls about your closing funds, do not read them the account number, the routing number, or the wiring instructions. Make them read the numbers to you. You confirm or deny what they say. Nothing more.
If the caller cannot read the information back to you accurately, end the call.
What actually targets a real estate transaction
Wire fraud gets the attention, but it is one of several. Here is the full picture, with what each one tends to look like.
Wire and payment redirection
Altered instructions for closing funds or earnest money, timed to the day payment is due. Often sent from an address that is one character different from the real one.
Seller impersonation
Someone who does not own a property lists it for sale using stolen identity documents. Vacant land and homes owned from out of state are targeted most.
Caller ID and email spoofing
A call or message that appears to come from a title company, a lender, an attorney, or your own agent. The displayed number and the sending address are both easy to fake.
Signature requests, portals, texts, and QR codes
An unexpected request to sign a document, a link to a secure-looking portal, a payment request by text, or a printed code routing to a page built to capture a login. Logos and familiar names are easy to copy and prove nothing.
Fake listings and rental scams
Real photos and a real address, posted by someone with no connection to the property, collecting deposits and application fees.
Deed and title fraud
A forged or fraudulently induced document transfers ownership away from the real owner, or records a lien that should not exist.
Foreclosure rescue and deed transfer offers
Foreclosure filings are public record. Operators read them daily and make contact fast, offering to save the home. The paperwork usually transfers the deed.
Online relationship and impersonation scams
Some money-movement schemes start in an online relationship rather than in a transaction, then turn into a request to send funds, add a name to a deed, or borrow against a home.
The pattern behind all of them
Every one of these works the same way: a name you already trust, plus a reason to hurry. Someone claims to be your agent, your title company, your lender, or your bank, and gives you a deadline.
Once you can see that pattern, you can see it everywhere, including in scams that have nothing to do with a home.
If something feels off
Pause. Waiting one hour to check costs you nothing.
- Call your agent on the number you already have for them.
- Call your title or escrow company on the number from your signed paperwork.
- Do not reply to the message, and do not use any number or link inside it.
If money has already been sent
Move now, in this order. The first hours matter more than anything else, and you do not need to understand what happened before you start.
- Call your bank's fraud department and ask for a wire recall due to fraud. Write down who you spoke to and the reference number.
- Call the receiving bank and report the transfer as fraud. Ask them to freeze the account.
- Call your title or escrow company so they can stop anything still pending on their side and flag the file.
- Call your bank back and confirm the recall was actually sent, not only requested.
- File at ic3.gov and note the complaint number. Reporting in the first 72 hours gives the best chance funds can be frozen.
- Call your local police for a report number, and tell your agent.
What arrives after closing
Recording makes a sale public within days. Solicitations and schemes built on that public record start arriving shortly after, aimed at both buyers and sellers. That phase has its own page.
Three things you can check yourself
Free here and in the free app, with no account required.
Message Scanner
Show it a suspicious text or email and it describes, in plain language, what looks wrong with it. Works on any scam, not only real estate ones.
Open the Message Scanner →Contact Lookup
Check what a phone number is: its line type, and whether it shows the characteristics associated with spoofing. Useful before you call a number back.
Open Contact Lookup →Property Visibility Check
See what is publicly visible about a home. It is the same detail criminals use when they build a convincing story about a property.
Run a Property Visibility Check →If you are a licensed agent
You can send this to your clients as a co-branded notice with your name and contact on it, at the start of a transaction, and every send is logged with a timestamp. It is free for you and free for your clients.
See how it worksHome Fraud Defense is an approved real estate fraud education school, Arizona Department of Real Estate #S25-0019, serving consumers and licensed professionals nationwide. ARELLO Affiliate Member.
This page is general consumer education. It is not legal or financial advice, and Home Fraud Defense does not confirm the identity of any person or the accuracy of any payment instruction. Laws and reporting agencies vary by state. Reviewed August 2026.