Wire Fraud Is Targeting South Florida Real Estate Deals — Protect Your Clients Now

South Florida consistently ranks among the top regions nationally for real estate wire fraud losses. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports that real estate wire fraud — where criminals intercept closing wire instructions and redirect funds to fraudulent accounts — has cost victims billions of dollars, with Florida among the hardest-hit states.

The average wire fraud loss in a South Florida real estate transaction exceeds $300,000. And unlike credit card fraud, wire transfers are rarely recoverable once sent.

How Real Estate Wire Fraud Works: Step by Step

1. Email account compromise: An attacker gains access to a real estate agent's, attorney's, or title company's email — often through phishing or a weak/reused password
2. Silent monitoring: The attacker monitors the compromised inbox for weeks, watching for active real estate transactions approaching closing
3. Timing the attack: Days before closing, the attacker sends a spoofed email from a lookalike domain (e.g., realtorname@coldwellbankr.com vs. coldwellbanker.com) with "updated" wire instructions
4. The buyer wires funds: Believing the instruction change is legitimate, the buyer wires their down payment or closing funds to the attacker's account
5. The money disappears: Funds are immediately moved through multiple accounts and often converted to cryptocurrency within hours

What Your Brokerage IT Security Must Include

• Multi-factor authentication on all email accounts — this single control stops the majority of email compromises. No exceptions.
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium — includes Defender for Office 365 with anti-phishing, anti-spoofing, and Safe Links
• DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records — prevents attackers from spoofing your domain in outbound emails to clients
• Email security training — monthly phishing simulations so agents recognize social engineering
• Wire instruction verification policy — written policy requiring phone verification of ANY wire instruction change, using a known phone number (not one provided in the email)
• Encrypted email for wire instructions — never send wire instructions in plaintext email
• Endpoint Detection & Response — to catch malware that may be logging keystrokes or exfiltrating data

FREC Compliance & IT

Florida Real Estate Commission (FREC) requirements include maintaining transaction records for 5 years. Your IT infrastructure must support compliant document retention, secure client data storage, and access controls on transaction files. We help brokerages implement Microsoft 365 with SharePoint document management that satisfies FREC retention requirements.

For hardware needs, visit compustores.com. Full portfolio at 123technologygroup.com.

→ Get a free real estate IT security assessment