The Phone Call to Make Before You Wire Money for a Home

On Tuesday, November 10, 2026, our weekly office meeting at REALTY EXPERTS® in Fremont was a wire fraud prevention class. Vicky Guo, AVP, senior escrow officer and branch manager at Chicago Title's Fremont office, taught it, and Dianna Tam, a sales executive there, arranged it. The announced agenda covered business email compromise and phishing, how hackers create spoofed emails, the common warning signs, risk management and prevention, and an overview of Chicago Title's digital transaction platforms.

I left with one job: make sure every buyer and seller I work with hears about this before any money moves. What follows is my own guide for clients. It is not a recap of the class, and none of it should be read as Vicky's or Chicago Title's words. I looked up every figure myself and linked the source, and neither Vicky nor Chicago Title reviewed this post.

The biggest payment of your life usually moves by wire

On the morning of November 11, 2026, my live market page counted 217 Fremont listings, and the median asking price of the 184 already for sale was $1,299,444. A 20% down payment on that is about $260,000. The first piece, the earnest money deposit, is typically 3% of the price, about $39,000 here, and under the standard California purchase contract it's due within three business days after your offer is accepted, unless the contract says otherwise. My buyer's guide walks through that step. The rest follows in the last days before closing. Both usually travel by wire, and a wire is very hard to pull back once it leaves your bank.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center files this kind of theft under business email compromise. Its 2025 report, released in April 2026, counted 24,768 complaints and about $3.05 billion in losses across all industries, the second costliest crime type in the report. It doesn't break out home purchases, but two of its case examples are closings. In one, a buyer received an email that appeared to come from the title company, with wire instructions for more than $1.3 million. In the other, buyers wired more than $449,000 after an email that impersonated their attorneys.

It reaches ordinary buyers, too. In the 2026 State of Wire Fraud report from CertifID, a company that sells wire fraud protection to title and escrow firms, 22% of the homebuyers surveyed said they received a suspicious or fraudulent message during their closing.

The thief reads the email thread and waits for the right day

Nobody breaks into the bank. The usual pattern looks like this:

1. Someone's inbox is taken over. It can be the buyer's, the seller's, an agent's or a lender's. The way in is often a fake sign-in page ("a document is waiting for you") or a password reused from another site.
2. The thief reads quietly. The thread shows the address, the price, the closing date, the names and which escrow company is handling the sale.
3. The message arrives right on schedule. A few days before money is due, an email that looks like it's from escrow or your agent says the wiring instructions have been "updated", with a reason that sounds routine.
4. The money moves twice. It lands in an account the thief controls and is sent on again, sometimes within hours.

There are three kinds of fake: an address that is one letter off or ends differently, the right name shown over the wrong address, or a real account that has been hacked. That last one is why checking the sender's address is not enough. The message can come from the true address and sit inside the real thread.

Most warning signs come back to instructions that change

• New or "updated" wiring instructions, for any reason at all.
• Instructions that show up before escrow has told you how they'll arrive.
• Pressure. Send it today or the house is gone, or the closing was moved up.
• A push to stay on email. "I'm in meetings all day, just reply here."
• An account in a person's name, or in the name of a business you've never heard of.
• A phone number in the message that isn't the one you were given at the start.
• A link that asks you to sign in to your email to see a document.
• Small things that are off: the tone, the signature, a message sent at 2 in the morning.

A phone call isn't proof by itself anymore. The FBI's report says voice cloning can be used to request a wire payment, and an August 2026 National Association of REALTORS® article warns that scammers can clone an agent's voice and call buyers to say the wiring instructions changed. So the direction of the call matters. You place it, to a number you already had.

The rule I give every client: you make the call, to a number you saved on day one

The emails I get from Chicago Title's staff carry a footer notice: changes to wiring instructions are never accepted or requested by email, and you should always call your escrow team to verify. Its public WireSafe page lists steps of its own. Here's how I ask my clients to do it, in my words:

1. Save the number on day one. When escrow opens, save your escrow officer's phone number from the company's official website or from a card handed to you in person. I'll hand it to you in person as well.
2. Call before every wire. When instructions arrive, call that saved number, never one in the message, and read the routing number, the account number and the name on the account back.
3. Ask your bank what it can verify. Ask whether it can confirm that the account number belongs to the name on your instructions before it sends. Many banks can't see who owns an account at another bank, and the receiving bank is generally allowed to post a wire by the account number alone (UCC section 4A-207). The right name on your form won't stop a wrong number, which is why the call to escrow is the check that counts.
4. Confirm it arrived. Call escrow the same day and make sure the money landed.

And this is what I say out loud at our first meeting:

"I will never send you wiring instructions. If anyone emails, texts or calls to say they changed, even if it looks or sounds like me, stop. Treat it as fraud, and call the escrow office at the number you saved on day one before you send a dollar."

Most California sales written on the California Association of REALTORS® forms also include a one page advisory that buyers and sellers sign, the Wire Fraud and Electronic Funds Transfer Advisory. It says much the same thing: get phone and account numbers from your escrow officer at the start, and never wire before calling a number you were given earlier. It's one page in a tall stack, which is why I go over it out loud.

If the money has already gone out, speed matters more than anything

1. Call your bank's fraud or wire department immediately. Say the wire was fraudulent, ask for a recall, ask what indemnity paperwork the recall needs (the FBI calls it a hold harmless letter or letter of indemnity), and ask them to have the receiving bank freeze the account.
2. File a complaint at ic3.gov right away, with the full details of the transfer. The FBI's instruction is to file regardless of the amount.
3. Call your escrow officer and call me, then report it to your local police and your FBI field office.

If you find out a day or two later, do all of it anyway.

In 2025 the FBI's Recovery Asset Team acted on 3,900 cases and reported freezing about $679 million of the $1.16 billion at stake, which it counts as a 58% success rate. In the $449,000 closing above, the full amount was still sitting in the receiving account, on hold, when the team reached the bank. Those are the cases the team took on, not every victim, and a freeze is not the same as getting every dollar back. For money sent to another country, the Treasury Department's FinCEN says its best chance of stopping a wire comes when it's reported to law enforcement within 72 hours.

Money from relatives or from another country needs more lead time

Many buyers I work with get help from a parent or a relative, and sometimes that money starts in an account overseas. Here's what I ask for:

• Tell your loan officer early, and your escrow officer too. Gift money needs a gift letter signed by the giver and a paper trail (Fannie Mae's rules are typical), and your lender decides how it has to arrive.
• Start sooner than feels necessary. A wire from abroad can pass through more than one bank and take days, and a closing date doesn't wait.
• The rule covers whoever is sending. If a relative is wiring for you, nobody sends anything until you have called escrow at your saved number and confirmed the exact details they're about to use.

Sellers are targets at the other end of escrow

Your sale proceeds leave escrow by wire too. A thief who has been reading the thread can write to escrow as you, with a "new" bank account for your payout. In the recovery cases CertifID handled in 2025, the median loss when a seller's proceeds were diverted was $343,497, according to the same report. So expect your escrow officer to verify your payout instructions carefully, by phone or in person, and take it as a good sign.

If you own a property you don't live in, such as a rental or vacant land, there's a second fraud to know about, where someone poses as the owner and tries to sell it. The American Land Title Association's 2026 study found that 59% of the title firms it surveyed saw at least one attempt in 2025. I wrote about that side in four title and escrow pros' stories about fake sellers.

Lock your own inbox, because that is the way in

• Turn on two-step sign-in for your email. An authenticator app or a passkey is stronger than a texted code.
• Use a password you use nowhere else.
• Never sign in to your email from a link in a message, even one that says a document is waiting.
• Check your mail settings for forwarding rules you didn't create. It's one way a thief keeps reading after you change the password.
• Keep account numbers out of email and text.

A secure portal keeps the instructions themselves out of your inbox. Chicago Title's parent company, Fidelity National Financial, runs one called inHere. Its site describes a secure place for escrow to collect and deliver wiring instructions and a way for buyers to submit earnest money electronically. Other title companies have their own. Whether your file uses one is your escrow officer's call, so on day one ask exactly how you'll receive wiring instructions. The invitation to a portal will itself arrive by email or text, so confirm by phone that it's coming before you click. After that, anything that arrives another way doesn't count.

I'm doing five things for every client from here on

• Saying the call-first rule out loud at our first meeting and again the week money moves, not only on a signed form.
• Never sending, forwarding or "confirming" wiring instructions myself. They come from escrow, and you verify them with escrow.
• Making sure you have your escrow officer's direct number, from me in person or from the company's own site, the day escrow opens.
• Asking early whether any funds are coming from relatives or from abroad, so your lender and escrow can plan for it.
• Keeping two-step sign-in on my own email, and calling you, not emailing, if anything about money ever looks off.

Thank you to Vicky and Dianna for the class

My thanks to Vicky Guo for a clear, practical class and to Dianna Tam for bringing her to our office.

If you're buying or selling in Fremont, Newark or Union City and want to talk through how your money will move before you're in escrow, call or text me at (510) 600-3425, or email homes@HarvRealtor.com. If you're just starting to plan a purchase, my guide to getting ready to finance a home is a good next read.

Harv Balu, REALTOR®

• Cell / Text: (510) 600-3425
• Email: homes@HarvRealtor.com
• Web: HarvRealtor.com
• REALTY EXPERTS® · 41051 Mission Blvd, Fremont, CA 94539 · DRE #02195792

Disclosures

This post is general information for consumers. It is not legal, financial, banking, lending, tax, cybersecurity or escrow advice, and reading it does not create an agency or client relationship. Harv Balu is a REALTOR® and California real estate licensee, not an attorney, banker, loan officer, security professional or escrow officer. Every transaction is different, so follow the instructions of your own escrow officer, lender and bank, and talk to an attorney about your legal rights.

No step described here guarantees that money can be protected or recovered. If you think you have sent money to the wrong account, contact your bank and law enforcement right away. Do not wait on anything in this post.

I wrote this after a class at REALTY EXPERTS® on November 10, 2026, and it is not a summary of that class. Vicky Guo, Dianna Tam and Chicago Title did not write, review or endorse it, and nothing here is a statement by them. The opinions and any errors are mine. Naming a company, a product or a service is not a recommendation or an endorsement, and the choice of a title and escrow company belongs to the parties to each transaction. Company and product names belong to their owners.

Figures come from the linked sources as of November 11, 2026 and may have changed since. Links go to outside websites that I do not control.

About the image: the header is an AI illustration of a kitchen table with house keys, a phone and a closed laptop. It is not a photograph of a real home, and no property shown is a listing.

The Fremont asking price is based on information from the Bay East Association of REALTORS® as of November 11, 2026. All data, including all measurements and calculations of area, is obtained from various sources and has not been, and will not be, verified by broker or MLS. All information should be independently reviewed and verified for accuracy. Properties may or may not be listed by the office/agent presenting the information.

Equal Housing Opportunity. Harv Balu, CA DRE #02195792. REALTY EXPERTS® (CA DRE #00414413) is independently owned and operated. © 2026 Harv Balu, REALTY EXPERTS®.