Real Estate Wire Fraud Recovery

Our names are Pat & Marisa Lawlor. We started this Fundraiser to recover our life savings and to share with you what happened to us.

Real Estate Wire Fraud is a Cyber Crime by which criminals engage in defrauding real estate customers of money intended for deposits or down payments by pretending to be Escrow Officers, Title Agents, Lenders or Realtors by communicating Wire Transfer Instructions via email.

Over the last few years criminal enterprises have zeroed in on the real estate industry since wire transfers are commonplace & the transaction amounts are high. Since 2020 the real estate industry has experienced massive growth in wire fraud with some studies citing a 2000% increase, particularly since the pandemic which caused more & more financial transactions to be conducted online.

This massive growth in Real Estate Wire Fraud over the last several years has obligated many real estate professionals & companies to reimagine their approach to protecting their clients which has resulted in practices that have set a new standard in the real estate industry.

Some examples of these practices include adding a wire fraud warning in the email signatures of agents and escrow officers, increasing insurance coverage to cover wire fraud losses or carrying separate cyber crime insurance, implementing two factor authentication practices on wire transfer instructions, and omitting complete account numbers from wire transfer instructions thus forcing bankers to call escrow officers on behalf of the customer to obtain the correct information before sending their money.

While many reputable escrow companies have been vigilant on setting new industry standards to protect clients from wire fraud, there are plenty who are still operating their business with a low standard of practice. Unfortunately for us we were involved in an escrow with a second-rate company chosen by the seller.

Here’s what happened:

Last year we were very fortunate to find ourselves as first time buyers, purchasing a home in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles.

After our offer was accepted we opened escrow & during the escrow process our down payment was stolen by criminals who were impersonating our escrow officer.

We lost over $160,000.

Criminals hacked into our escrow officer’s email by way of Business Email Compromise & engaged in social engineering, learning of the address of the property, closing disclosure amounts, & the timeline of our escrow including the closing date.

On the Friday before closing I received an email containing wire instructions from a criminal who I believed to be my escrow officer and after calling him, & then emailing him to confirm the amount, I went to the bank & wired the money.

A week later I received the real email from my real escrow officer to wire our down payment. The email format was virtually identical. That’s when we found out that we had been defrauded of our life savings.

The experience was traumatic and absolutely devastating. I couldn’t believe it was real while it was happening. I immediately went to my local bank where I had wired the money from & filed a fraud claim & a recall claim & while that started a short process of reporting the fraud with them & the receiving bank. They made it clear that there was nothing they can do to help us get our money back.

I went to the LAPD & filed a police report. I filed a complaint with the FBI, the department of financial protection & innovation, & other consumer agencies that monitor fraud & cyber crime.

During the process of doing this I thought to myself – it’s only money – it could be much worse. People are losing loved ones or have ill health. This is just material stuff. But, the feelings were the same. It was horrible. We worked for that money & saved it & then it was just gone.

I reached out to someone we’re close to for advice. I told him what happened & asked him what we should do? He replied I’m so sorry this happened to you guys. He offered to loan us the money to get the house. He said we love you guys. You don’t deserve this. Get the house. Do it for your family.

We were able to get the house. From the minute our money was stolen we were surrounded by love by family, friends, & people who didn’t even know us. We’ve been very fortunate to be able to move forward with love & support from friends & family.

We’ve started a gofundme in hopes to get back the money that was stolen from us. If you’re unable to help with a donation, we hope you will send this video to anyone you know who might benefit from our experience.

Please forward it to as many people as you can so that it may serve as caution to anyone who might be buying a home, especially for their first time or if this video finds its way to anyone who is going through or has been through this same situation so they can see that they are not the only ones going through this.

This is happening at an alarming rate. If you know anyone who is in this situation please have them feel free to reach out to me through this campaign. I’ve received a very expensive education in real estate wire fraud & would be happy to share any experience I can if it would help in any way.