Real estate wire fraud losses hit $275 million in 2025, up from $173 million the year before, as scammers increasingly intercept closings with a single convincing email, according to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center annual report. The bureau logged 12,368 real estate-related complaints for the year, and the losses now trail only the 2022 peak of $397 million.
How the scam works
The mechanics are consistent across cases: a fraudster impersonates an attorney, title agent, or closing coordinator and sends a homebuyer a deceptive email at the exact moment they’re expecting wiring instructions, directing funds to an account the scammer controls. In one incident described in the IC3 report, a wire for more than $449,000 was submitted at a buyer’s bank and sent to the fraudulent recipient bank before the fraud was caught, according to reporting on the report from the National Association of Realtors. Because a legitimate closing genuinely does require a large wire transfer on a tight deadline, buyers have little reason to question instructions that look routine and arrive from what appears to be a familiar source.
Key points
- $275 million in reported real estate wire fraud losses for 2025, per the FBI’s IC3 report — a 59% jump from 2024’s $173 million.
- 12,368 complaints filed in 2025, up from 9,359 in 2024 and 9,521 in 2023.
- Losses remain below the 2022 peak of $397 million, but the trend line has turned back upward for two straight years.
- The report flags generative AI as a factor making fraudulent emails and even voice impersonation harder to distinguish from legitimate closing communications.
The American Land Title Association, the trade group representing title insurers and settlement agents, has pointed to the same data in its own statement on the report, reinforcing that the rise in losses comes even as more title companies adopt verification protocols. That gap between rising awareness and rising losses is part of what makes the trend notable: this isn’t a scam catching an unprepared industry off guard so much as one that keeps adapting faster than the safeguards built to stop it.
What buyers can do
NAR’s guidance for agents and brokerages centers on a few concrete habits: never wire funds based on emailed instructions alone, always confirm account details by calling a known, independently verified phone number rather than one listed in the email itself, and treat any last-minute change to wiring instructions as an automatic red flag. Title and closing professionals are also being urged to run regular wire fraud and AI-cybersecurity training for staff, since a single compromised inbox at a title company or brokerage can be enough to intercept dozens of closings before anyone notices a pattern. For buyers, the practical takeaway is blunt: a phone call before a wire transfer costs a few minutes. Skipping it has cost homebuyers hundreds of millions of dollars in the past year alone.
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