If it wasn’t for the intervention of Independence Title CEO Kevin Tacher, the family of a South Florida mother who lost her $64,000 down payment on a condo to wire fraud might not have their new home.
Even though Independence Title, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was not involved in the transaction, when Tacher heard about Patricia Verlino’s plight through a Facebook post, he stepped in to help.
“Someone just happened to tag me because they know I deal a lot with wire fraud because of the size of our company,” he said in an interview with The Title Report. “They tagged me, and the rest is history.”
Verlino started a GoFundMe campaign to try to recover the money. The single mother has two daughters, ages 12 and 15. “I have worked so hard to build a life for them,” she wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Things finally started to improve, and I made a goal to buy my own house for us. I worked two full-time jobs, I drove Uber, and I’ve done handyman work on the side for several years to build my credit and income to afford a house.”
She saved $64,000 for a down payment for a condo. “I was cleared to close,” she wrote. “I received an email from what I thought was the title company, since it had the same name, address as someone I had worked with. They asked me to give the wire instructions to my bank for the cash to close. I did it.”
The bank wired the money to the account, which turned out to be fraudulent.
“The woman on the email has the exact name, last name, license number for someone who was no longer working for the title company,” Verlino wrote. “The title company never called me for the proper wire instructions. I thought I did everything right.”
With Tacher’s help, the bank recovered $34,000 of the stolen money, and GoFundMe donors raised the rest after news of the campaign spread.
Without an information technology audit, it’s hard to know exactly what happened, but Tacher said it looks like the real estate agent’s email was compromised. For most of the transaction, Verlino communicated with her Realtor, who he described as an “inexperienced,” part-time agent. Verlino didn’t interact with the title company until closing, he said.
Hackers that compromise an account can surreptitiously monitor email conversations between Realtors and title companies, waiting until it’s time for money to change hands. In this case, they “spoofed” the title company’s email account, creating a very convincing fake, he said.
“The person’s name, email address; everything looks legit. The wiring instructions look legitimate,” Tacher said. “And then the hacker will email the buyer directly saying, ‘We’re getting ready for closing, here’s the wiring instructions, please go send it immediately as to not cause any delay in your closing.’ Verlino knew she was supposed to be closing in the next day or two, so the email made sense to her, so she printed the wire instructions, called the bank and wired the money.”
At the closing table, Verlino told the title agents she wired the $64,000 and shared the emailed wire instructions. “Nobody caught that the account number was different. It looked the same because the hackers make it look legitimate,” he said.
The closing was on a Wednesday, Tacher said, and the seller, believing the money was sent, “was super sweet” and let Verlino and her children move in that day.
“Then Thursday, the money still wasn’t there, Friday the money still wasn’t there, and they said, ‘Oh, probably by Monday, no problem,’” he said. “Then some point on Saturday, they realized the money was sent to a false account.”
The title company and real estate agency, which are owned by the same person, “kind of just ignored her, basically told her we had nothing to do with it and you’re on your own,” Tacher said. “She then had to go into emergency mode to figure out what to do, and that’s when they reached out to me.”
Tacher said Independence Title spent hundreds of hours on the case, talking with local authorities, the FBI, banks, and attorneys. They learned the scammers wrote two $30,000 certified checks on the account.
“After about a week, the bank was able to reverse one of the certified checks, plus get the $4,000 that they left in the bank account, so they got her back $34,000 of the $64,000,” he said.
GoFundMe donations made up the other $30,000.
It took three weeks until Verlino was able to properly wire the $64,000 to close on the condo with Independence Title, Tacher said. He also worked with City Furniture, a local store, which donated full bedroom sets to the children.
Independence Title closes between 80 and 100 transactions a month, so Tacher is no stranger to wire fraud attempts like the one Verlino fell victim to. Typically, it’s realty companies that get their email or digital transactions compromised, he said.
“Title companies kind of know better,” he said.
He has helped uncover several scams, including a lot-stealing scam in Miami. Tacher also worked with the FBI to get a fraudster behind bars when he caught him trying to scam his title company during a closing.
“It’s kind of fun for me to do when I see things like this happen. It’s a little bit of a challenge for me to figure out what happened, how did it happen, how could we prevent it from happening again in the future,” he said. “Being able to kind of put the pieces to the puzzle together, especially in a case like this, it just kind of warms my heart to be able to do it.”
As much as Tacher enjoys helping scam victims and investigating fraud, he would much prefer to help stop such scams from occurring in the first place. Independence Title has several security practices in place to protect transactions.
“We make Realtors and the buyers sign a DocuSign affidavit before we even send them wiring instructions,” Tacher said. “When we send the instructions, we make them initial and sign it in like 10 different places. We tell them we will never change them, that these have been our instructions for the last 10-plus years, if you’re asked to change it for any reason, call our office immediately, that nobody’s going tell you to wire it anywhere but here.”
The most important safeguard is communication, he said.
“Communication with the clients is No. 1, setting expectations, letting them know this is who we are, this is the role we play in the industry,” he said. “We tell them wire fraud is one of the largest scams around right now, with billions of dollars being stolen, and please don’t transfer any money if you ever receive an email unless you check it out first.”
“Our policy is, we will talk to the client. They may not like talking to us several times a day, but they don’t have a choice but to do it or take their closing elsewhere. We do this for their protection, to make sure we are looking out for them,” he said.
He also recommends title companies and Realtors invest in a strong firewall, require secured email accounts with two-factor authentication, provide education and regular cybersecurity awareness training for staff members, and that they notify authorities and their insurance carrier the instant fraud is suspected.
“If this title company would have put people on alert immediately, they probably would have gotten all the money back and it would have been a wonderful story for them to show how they got their client’s money back. Instead, they refused to file a claim with insurance, and they refused to even help her,” Tacher said.
“If it were me, I would do everything in my power to protect my customer. That’s my job. I have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that I'm looking out for them and protecting them, and they understand I have their back no matter what it takes. If it means I take a loss on my insurance, it is what it is,” he said.
“They decided to say, ‘Have a nice day, we did nothing wrong, we weren’t compromised, good luck,’ and refused to help her with anything. That’s why I got involved. This is just not OK with me. They should have looked out for her, and they didn’t.”