Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/23/silicon-valley-exec-loses-398359-58-in-real-estate-wire-fraud.html
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When i was in the process of buying my first home last year the realtors (who were great) made it real clear that this can happen, and whenever you are getting ready to wire money you should call beforehand, and overcommunicate to really make sure you’re sending it to the right company/person. This story pretty much confirms that this kind of fraud is possible.
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I’m not sure what labelling Robillard as a “Silicon Valley exec” and a “Tech industry veteran” is supposed to connote in this context other than to suggest that even someone with a high level of tech-savviness can fall for such a scam. Whatever it is, “Chief People Officer” undoes that work.
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Isn’t this why you double check the escrow party before wiring the money? Odds are that they are legit, particularly if they are associated with a title company, but a quick check is pretty easy.
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It is possible to put more safeguards in place to counter this type of fraud- here’s one such scheme that’s in operation here, to make sure that you’re sending money to who you think you are:
https://www.wearepay.uk/what-we-do/overlay-services/confirmation-of-payee/
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My impression of the correlation between technical facility and scam resistance has been a little disappointing(it doesn’t seem to be completely absent; but it’s weaker than I would have expected); but it does seem unlikely that someone who does HR at a tech company is notably more technical than someone who does HR anywhere else.
Being the “Chief People Officer” might actually be unhelpful: people lower down the HR and payroll food chain get low-effort “plz reassign my direct deposit” scam attempts all the time, which likely hardens them to the realities of blindly transferring money; but a c-level is less likely to have gotten their hands dirty with that recently.
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This kind of fraud is very, very real.
A company I work with lost close to $2MM in a similar scheme. They had even followed the protocol of calling to verify the payment instructions they received, but made the mistake of calling a phone number that was provided by the thief, not the actual phone number of the intended recipient of the payment.
Do not under any circumstances ever send a wire (or Zelle or ACH payment or whatever) to someone unless you have some kind of independent verification that the payment instructions came from the actual person or company that you intend to pay.
A common attack vector is for hackers to try to spear-phish people who tend to handle wires (e.g., anyone with the title “controller” on LinkedIn) or residential real estate transactions where wires tend to get sent (e.g., title agents, escrow agents, mortgage brokers–all of whom are likely to be on email chains where wire instructions get shared). Then they lay low and watch the victim’s email, waiting for a pending transaction where they can try to impersonate the recipient of a wire, both by email AND by phone.
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See, this is a place where the low-tech paper check would have saved a lot of grief.
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JP Morgan Chase is better understood as an organized criminal enterprise rather than a bank.
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