Over the last few years, business email compromise (BEC) scams have rocketed — costing victims $1.45 billion in 2016 alone (FBI report). Now a new related threat has emerged — the mortgage phishing scam — that seems likely to follow a similar trajectory.
It is early days and the scam — like BEC in its early days — goes by various names: mortgage phish, mortgage escrow scam, real estate wire transfer scam, and mortgage wiring scam. But it is growing. In June 2017, during National Homeownership Month, the FTC issued a warning: “the FTC and the National Association of Realtors want to remind you that scammers sometimes use emails to rob home buyers of their closing costs and personal information.”
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