COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Crooks are once again targeting home buyers during real estate closings and trying to find ways to divert or intercept wire transfers of down payments.
“I received an email from who I thought was my realtor,” Bill Adair told Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray.
In that email telling the Adairs it was time to wire closing funds for their soon-to-be-new home, the real estate agent wrote they were “looking forward to a smooth closing”.
A follow-up email provided the total amount due at closing, nearly $9,000, and the wire instructions.
“Everything looked 100% legitimate,” Adair said.
But by the time the Adairs realized a scammer was spoofing their real estate agent’s email, the money was gone, likely for good.
“I didn’t really want to get out of bed for like a week, and that’s not like me. I was in a daze and very depressed,” Kelly Adair said.
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It’s a form of wire fraud that Channel 2 Action News Investigates has been reporting on for five years now.
In 2021, crooks posed as Denise Hindle’s closing attorney.
“We had wired a quarter of a million dollars,” Hindle to Gray in 2021. “It was kind of an overwhelming, sickening feeling.”
Since then, most closing attorneys are now using secure portals, not email. They have put extra protection and warnings in place for this kind of fraud.
But by posing as their real estate agent, the criminals got to the Adairs before the closing attorney did.
“The money was gone. It was too late,” Bill Adair said.
The Adairs were still able to close on their Bartow County home, but want to warn others about what happened to them.
“I had to go into my retirement, which I didn’t want to have to do, to fix all of this,” Bill Adair said.