Real estate experts in Rhode Island have issued a consumer alert about the apparent real estate scam that have already victimized a local couple.
In a report by Turn to 10, they revealed that the methods that the real estate scammers employed may appear simple at first, but are actually very sophisticated. The scammers will pose as a real estate agent and find their target.
According to Connor Dowd, a broker with Keller Williams Realty of Newport, the scammers will hack into the e-mail account of a real estate agent and will try to learn about all the current real estate transactions that the agent is dealing with.
Another agent from the Keller Williams Realty of Newport has told the Turn to 10 news that his e-mail account was compromised by a hacker just last week, and that the hacker has monitored every e-mail he has had with a client. The hackers will then choose a real estate transaction that is about to close and will create a fake e-mail address to dope the clients.
"The email was written in the same font that the email normally [is], along with their signature line. They also change the email address by one or two letters, so if someone didn't really look at it, they would think it's coming from their real estate agent," said Dowd. "It was specific to the property and the scary part was that the amounts that the hacker was requesting were the exact amounts that would have been put down on this transaction."
The latest victim of the real estate scam is a local couple who have wire-transferred a total amount of $13,000 to the fake real estate agent.
Real estate brokers and agents from Keller Williams Realty had no idea what was going on until a client of theirs came in asking for more information about the $20,000 wire transfer that the company allegedly requested.
The real estate company has already issued a warning to their clients about the latest real estate scam that is apparent in their area. They are also warning others who are still in the real estate market to "never instigate a wire transfer based on e-mail instructions."
