As a realtor or broker in the State of Colorado, it is important to be aware of a real estate scam targeting Colorado real estate transactions.
Recently, one of these scammers cost one owner over $80,000! Court documents were obtained by a local news broadcasting company, Denver7, that outlined how the events of the scam unfolded.
A land title company officially handled a closing for property in the City of Denver. The owner of the property arranged for a total of $82,896 to be wired from the company to the individual’s personal account. The day of the closing, an email was sent to the seller stating that she should wire the funds to a different account. The seller did as she was instructed, only to later discover that the money was gone.
The email that was sent to the seller telling her to wire her money to a different account was from an imposter. The individual sending the email had used a Mail.com address that included the same username from the licensed agent’s email with Comcast.net.
Quickly, the company realized the mistake. Unfortunately, the funds were wired to the imposter’s account and quickly distributed to several other financial accounts.
Despite the best efforts made by the Greenwood Village Police, the money was only tracked out of the state and no further. As the investigation continued, it was determined that several other types of transactions had taken place across the State of Colorado.
The next real estate scam involved a realtor in Arvada, Karen Nichols.
Karen Nichols had a client that was to place $65,000 down on a new home. Everything was in place for the transaction to take place; however, a scammer hacked Ms. Nichols’ email account and made an attempt to convince the new property owner to wire the money to a different account.
The new property owner became suspicious and contacted the scammer, inquiring about the names of Ms. Nichols’ children and so on and so forth.
Unfortunately, the scammer was unable to answer appropriately; however, the con artist WAS able to provide names of those directly related to Karen Nichols.
Immediately, the new property owner contacted Ms. Nichols.
Apparently, the scammer had been maneuvering through Ms. Nichols’ email to obtain as much information about her as possible. The con artist ended up learning a great deal about the realtor and nearly cost her client thousands of dollars.
Luckily, that client caught on to the issue and alerted Karen Nichols; however, had he not, he would have spent a great deal of money and never been able to retrieve it.
Even worse, the realtor could have been held responsible.
The Colorado real estate market has been attempting to spread the word to all that specialize in property sales and property management throughout the state – especially in and around Denver.
If you use email to handle transactions, be sure to change your email password frequently. You should make hard copies of all relevant emails and clear out your account on a regular basis. You should also call your clients to verify any wiring of funds. You should also notify your clients for the potential for fraud.
