Where fraud hides

Gate one: the paper

Does the paper do what the deal says it does? Read it as if you were the one wiring.

• Do the contracts match each other: parties, property, dates?
• Does the person signing have the authority to sign? For a company, is it in good standing and does the signer belong to it?
• Is the lien position confirmed, by whom, and as of what date?
• Does the story hold up across the borrower, the contracts and title?

Gate two: the borrower and the title company, together

A good borrower with a title company nobody can verify is a risk. A good title company with a borrower nobody can verify is the same risk. It is the pairing that gets checked, not either one alone.

• Find the title company through a channel the borrower did not give you.
• Confirm the closer is a real person by calling a number you sourced yourself.
• Check that the deal story is the same from every side.

The wire rule

Changed wire instructions mean nothing moves. Not a delay. Nothing.

Wire instructions get verified by phone, out of band, using a number you did not get from the email that carries the instructions. A change in the middle of a deal is a hard stop. It does not matter how convincing the email looks or how senior the sender sounds.

Patterns, not names

These are patterns worth knowing. They are described in general terms on purpose.

• New wire instructions arrive the morning of closing, from an address that is almost the real one.
• A title company that exists only as a website and a phone number the borrower supplied.
• A seller who cannot be reached except through the person who brought the deal.
• Pressure to skip a step because the closing is today.