Warning - Scam/Fraud !!!

@surfer63 Sorry to hear of this but thanks for the warning. I hope that it can be resolved.

 

Sorry to hear about this - appreciate the heads up. Hope you get your money back

 

This is actually a common scam. Many people have lost 10's and even 100's of thousands of dollars when the scammer imitates a real estate broker's email and the victim thinks they are paying for a property.

 

Were you contacted here? What was the username?

 

Sorry to hear of this event happening to you. It's a shame when we do all the right things and something like this still happens.

You might want to check with your insurance agent and see if you have coverage for this.
We are with PURE Insurance and have this coverage with our policy.
Good luck and thanks for sharing this with us.

Regards,
GG

 

I have heard this happening to auto dealers as well. Its always best to call and verify any changes vs just counting on an email. We all think we aren't being considered for a hack but you never know.

 

So are you saying the seller scammed you, or some 3rd party picked that exact moment to hack an innocent account?

 

We deal with nonsense like this all the time in real estate. Title/Escrow companies open title and a fake email is sent out with an address that looks awfully similar to something that seems legitimate. And once it is discovered, it is too late

 

Yep, it absolutely does. A dealer here just got scammed that way on an AMG Black Series.

Thanks for the heads up, hope you get your money back.

 

He knows it's not the seller because the OP has the bank account info.

 

So how did a hacking occur at just the right time to score big?

 

Here's how it works. A hacker sends out emails to 1000's of email accounts pretending to be a legitimate site, e.g. Comcast, Verizon, GMail, etc. An unwitting person thinking they are verifying their account divulges his password. The hacker can now access that person's email account and read all incoming and outgoing emails.

When there are just mundane exchanges he does nothing. One week, or one month later when an incoming email from a banker reads "send your $100,000 escrow money to [insert bank account #]" the hacker pounces. He sends a new email to the hacked account saying "sorry I meant to type account #".

Certainly the hacker could have accessed the email account the very day the OP's transaction occurred, but most likely it was being monitored for a period of time.

There are a number of scams that can work off of this hack. For example, from reading emails they know the person has a grandchild, they send an email purporting to be from the child saying he/she is in Mexico and all their money was stolen and please send a Western Union wire for $1000.

I don't know why you keep thinking the OP was the scammer. I guess he could have made up the whole thing, but what would be the point?

 

????? Have no idea why you said this, I just didn't understand how this works