Boise Family Loses New House to Email Criminals


POOF! A down payment gone! My sweet sister and her family have been devasted just before Christmas and are the victims of wire fraud!  This cute little 2020 sq. ft. home was to be theirs just before Christmas. After 17 years of thrifty saving and building equity into their current 1300 sq. ft. home, they were finally ready to buy a slightly larger home for their 3 growing children. This family is the most deserving, hard-working, and generous family I know. Never have they lived above their means, carefully using responsible spending habits, building excellent credit. They literally would and have given the shirt off their backs to those in need.  They are close knit and happy. But this should not have happened! It only takes 300 people to make a difference for them. Please read the tragedy in my sister’s own words: 
I write this in hopes of saving someone from the life changing heartache my family and I have experienced this week, and will continue to pay for over the next 30 years. You may read this, as I did others, and think you must be pretty stupid to fall for this type of scheme. Maybe you are right, I have definitely questioned my own intelligence over the past few days. I just know that had I been warned of this particular scam it wouldn't have happened.
For 17 years we have built equity into our home. It wasn't until now that that there was enough that we felt comfortable finding a slightly bigger yet affordable home. Our current home is pretty crowded so we decided to take out an equity loan for the down payment, buy and move into the new home, then sell this one and pay off the loan. Our offer was accepted, our credit great, and everything moved flawlessly. We packed up a lot of our home, including Christmas presents that were purchased, wrapped, and boxed (a significant # of the presents for everyone were things for the new home).
Thursday the pre-close documents came from the bank, and the next day the escrow wire instructions came from the realtor. I made it to the bank on Friday and we got the wire through with only a minute remaining until the cutoff time for wire transfers (If only there had been more traffic that day). Everything was on track to Celebrate Christmas in our new home.
Monday came, and you can imagine our surprise, when we received another set of wire instructions from our realtor. We immediately inquired of the discrepancies and learned that for a week we had been communicating with someone posing as our realtor. This had to be some kind of joke. I guess in the end it was, the joke was on us.
We had been the victim of wire fraud. 17 years of hard work and savings gift wrapped and sent through the banks to a criminal with a perfect little bow on top for Christmas. Our bank reached out to BofA's fraud line, who refused to give us any information because "legally" they are required to protect the criminal. The wire was on Friday, we caught it on Monday, and the money was gone leaving us with no protection or recourse. The breach could have come from our e-mail, our realtor, the escrow company, the seller, or one of 3 banks, yet we are left to pay the whole price. All parties including the police department are telling us that we have no recourse, unless we secure a high powered attorney putting another burden on our crippled finances.
So tonight we sit here among boxes that I can't bring myself to unpack and teaching my children that crying isn't a sign of weakness, even grown men can cry. Out of pain, anger, and humility I dedicate this post to the hacker wherever they are.
Dear hacker, I hope you are proud of yourself. With just a few keystrokes you crippled us financially, and took our home at Christmas. I will try to be forgiving as I still have what matters most, but the pain will come back for me and my children. I will not be able to shop for furniture, look at an empty paper box by the printer, go to a bank that was sorry, but couldn't help, or drive past the home that was going to be ours. I hope you took our down payment to help someone in need, at least then our sacrifice would be worth it. We will try to forgive, but I will also do what I need to in order to inform others so they don't have share in our pain.


EVEN  IF  YOU  CAN’T  DONATE  PLEASE  SHARE!!  GET  THE  WORD  OUT!

UPDATE: See the local news report by KTVB Channel 7 shown last night on the 10:00 news in Boise.

https://www.ktvb.com/mobile/article/news/boise-family-scammed-out-80000-meant-for-a-house-down-payment/277-fcb1f599-eb26-41b7-a92b-4985b8e1b881