Cybercrime Continues to Ravage Consumers and Pros

by Kara Cook

Two summers ago, after Heather and I attended the NS3 conference in Detroit, I summed up the tenor of the sessions as absolutely terrifying because of the proliferation of warnings about cybercrime, wire fraud schemes and bad actors. Today, I’m equally as terrified. Maybe more so.

Thanks to COVID-19, people are increasingly working from home and that tends to expose them to more digital risk. Because most home internet services don’t offer the robust digital protections that offices can, workers all over the world, and thus their companies and organizations, are becoming easier prey for cybercriminals. And bad actors are getting better and better at cybercrime by the day.

In fact, last week the news covered the massive Twitter hack of high profile people like President Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Kanye West regarding a bitcoin scam which the F.B.I. is now investigating.

Since March the United States Secret Service has been following the uptick of cybercrime and just earlier this month announced it has unified its teams into one Cyber Fraud Task Force (CFTF) specifically to address the increased risk. The Department of Homeland Security announced the Secret Service has now combined the Electronic Crimes Task Forces and the Financial Crimes Task Forces into the new CFTF with a mission to “prevent, detect, and mitigate complex cyber-enabled financial crimes, with the ultimate goal of arresting and convicting the most harmful perpetrators.”

With this very recent move, our national crime prevention experts note the inextricable link between cyber-enabled financial crimes, business email compromise scams, ransomware attacks, data breaches and identify theft.

In last year’s cyber blog, I focused on such hacks, especially business email compromise (BEC). I quoted some pretty staggering stats including that from 2015 to 2017, the real estate industry experienced greater than a 1,100% rise in the number of victims who reported real estate transaction fraud. And there was more than a 2,200% rise in reported amounts lost in real estate transaction scams.

You can never be too careful and, here at Cook & James, we stress vigilance throughout our system and to each person with whom we work. All our email signature lines have warnings that are red, capped, italicized and underlined. We’re practically screaming that you should NEVER TRUST WIRING INSTRUCTIONS sent by email or fax; always independently confirm any wiring instructions with our office using a verified, trusted phone number (i.e. NOT the one on the fishy-looking email); and be suspicious of hacked emails with fake wiring instructions.

You never think it’ll be you, but it easily can happen to any of us.

To help combat and empower everyone, we offer tools like a wire fraud advisory flyer complete with tips and suggestions – you can find that tip sheet easily in the drop down under the “Your Closing” tab on our website.  We share best practices from the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) with a checklist for real estate pros like email hygiene, IT security measures, and law and policy updates.

We share coverage regularly in our News Link section to curate reports from places like the New York Times on how to protect yourself from real estate scams and from a Forbes real estate writer who herself was nearly the victim of real estate wire fraud. These stories illustrate how smart, careful people can (and do) get hacked.

Every industry has its pitfalls, but ours – real estate – unfortunately has this really big danger that can jeopardize a person’s entire wealth. We have to remain aware, suspicious and vigilant. It’s not a foregone conclusion that we’ll be victimized, however we do believe it’s the prudent and responsible action to be alert to our surroundings. Our digital safety is every bit as vital to our health as our physical safety.