The one rule
Before sending any funds for a closing, call us at 724-733-7700 — dialed from this page or your commitment, never from a number in an email — and confirm the wire instructions verbally.
How the fraud works
Criminals compromise or convincingly imitate an email account involved in a transaction — an agent's, a lender's, a buyer's, sometimes a settlement company's — then send revised wire instructions days or hours before closing. The message looks right: correct file number, correct names, familiar tone, a plausible reason for the change. The account it points to is theirs, and money that lands there moves offshore quickly.
Rules for buyers and sellers
- Treat every emailed change to wire instructions as fraud. We will never change our instructions by email — if instructions change, the change isn't real until you've confirmed it with us by phone.
- Verify by phone before the first wire, too. Call 724-733-7700 and read the account details back to us before your bank sends anything.
- Use known phone numbers only — from this website or your title commitment, never from an email signature, which fraudsters control in a compromised thread.
- Slow down on deadline pressure. Urgency is the tell. A legitimate closing survives a two-minute verification call; a fraud rarely does.
- Confirm receipt after sending. Call us to confirm the funds arrived where they should have.
What we do on every file
- Settlement funds are held in separate, federally insured fiduciary accounts, reconciled daily.
- Positive Pay on disbursement accounts and dual authorization on large wires.
- Verbal callback verification on every payoff and disbursement wire instruction we receive — we apply the same rule to ourselves that we ask of you.
- Closing traffic runs on our own email tenancy, separate from any other business.
If you think something went wrong
Minutes matter more than anything else. In order:
- Call your bank and ask for the wire department to request a recall and freeze on the receiving account.
- Call us at 724-733-7700 so we can act on the file immediately.
- Report to the FBI at ic3.gov — rapid reporting through IC3 has recovered funds when started within the first 24–48 hours.