Last summer, Christian Thauer and his wife, who live in drought-stricken Reno, Nevada, with their two children, decided to buy a second home somewhere more temperate, where the sky wasn’t red from wildfires. After visiting friends in Maine, they settled on a three-bedroom house in Millinocket, where the summer climate is as mild as the price of real estate.
Thauer wired $78,430 to purchase the house on Nov. 26, the day after Thanksgiving. It was supposed to go to an account belonging to Bangor law firm Treworgy & Baldacci for a Monday closing.
But the money never arrived. By Tuesday, Thauer realized that years of savings were gone, stolen by cyber criminals.
“It’s devastating for us,” he said.
Thauer and his wife are now part of a growing number of would-be homebuyers who have been victims of an increasingly sophisticated kind of cybercrime called real estate transfer fraud. The schemes target the very end of the home purchase process, when buyers are eager to close a deal.
Meanwhile, a flood of out-of-state buyers has incentive to close quickly in Maine’s red-hot housing market. And closing fast often means sending funds via wire transfers, instead of paper checks, which are slower but more secure.
Here’s how the scam works: Hackers break into the emails of parties to real estate transactions and monitor the conversations. Just before the transaction is completed, the scammers jump in and pass wire transfer instructions to…
