New Scam Targeted at Real Estate Industry

Wire fraud schemes targeted toward those involved in real estate transactions have been a commonly discussed topic for some time, but there is now a new type of scam that is surfacing that is almost impossible to prevent, and at least 4,000 agents from all 50 states and Canada have already been impacted.

A real estate professional from Dubuque, Iowa says scammers are using her identity to create fake email addresses in her name and send fraudulent emails offering referrals to other real estate agents. The emails also contain fake contact information. Recipients who responded have been sent a Google Drive link that they are told contains listings the referred client wants to see. However, the link, once opened, installs computer viruses that allow scammers to scrape passwords and other personal information from the targets computer.

The initial fraudulent email typically reads as the below example:

"Hi,

My name is (Realtor’s Name) a realtor with (Real Estate Company Name) in Dubuque IA, I have a client who is interested in buying a property in your area of expert, Please let me know if you're available to help them out and I will send their contact details and the listings they are interested in.

Best

Realtor’s Name"

People who receive the email are encouraged to report it as spam or a phishing attempt. The hope is that if enough people take such action, the IP address of the sender will be blocked.

Since February 2016, when the scam apparently started, nearly 4,000 practitioners have contacted Dietz to either confirm the referral or warn her of the scam.

"I've gotten calls at the office, on my cell phone, texts and emails at all hours of the day and night," the real estate professional whose name is being used for the scam says. "There was one day I had over 100 pieces of correspondence just about these emails."

"Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible on the front end to prevent a fraudster from using your name in a scam," says Jessica Edgerton, associate counsel for the National Association of Realtors. "If you are the victim of any kind of identity theft, the best course of action is to immediately contact the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the FBI and your local authorities."

Edgerton says that recipients of suspicious emails that appear to come from another real estate professional should search that practitioner's name on Google to compare their business email address and contact information to that of the sender.

If you want to keep your email more secure, Edgerton offers the following tips:

• Check sent mail, junk mail and email account settings regularly for anomalies. Hackers often break into an email account and modify the "email forwarding" settings to forward emails to their own account.
• Regularly purge email of unneeded or outdated information. Save important emails securely.
• Avoid email as a method for sending sensitive or confidential information. Instead, consider using a secure document sharing or transaction management platform.
• Use strong passwords that incorporate a combination of letters, numbers and symbols.
• Use two-factor (or multi-factor) authentication.
• Avoid using unsecured or public Wi-Fi.