Tom Flanagan, vice president of technology, Alain Pinel REALTORS®, and others offer a variety of steps for those who fall victim to hackers:
- Immediately change all of your passwords across the web: email, banking, social media, etc.
- Implement two-step verification/multifactor authentication for your email account. Both gmail and Office 365 offer this feature for free.
- Cross-reference the rules and filters in your inbox and remove any that were added without your knowledge.
- Take screenshots and document every item.
- Contact clients and other impacted parties. Many state statutes may require REALTORS® to notify all affected parties after they become aware of a hack and many say it may be a best practice even if not required.
- Contact the lender. On international transactions, buyers should request that their financial institution issue a “SWIFT recall.” For domestic transfers, also request that your financial institution send a “hold harmless letter” to the beneficiary bank, according to the FBI.
- Contact the local REALTOR® association.
- Contact the FBI via Internet Crime Complaint Center.
- Contact the FTC. Speed in reacting to signs of a potential hack, particularly with respect to contacting affected lenders, may spell the difference between the ability to catch and/or reverse a wire fraud or not. “Notify your bank and/or local law enforcement of unauthorized wires as soon as possible,” says FBI supervisory special agent Ethan Via of the FBI Seattle Division. “Days, hours and minutes can make a difference in preventing monetary loss. This type of crime is challenging to prosecute due to its strong international component. However, if the scam is reported to law enforcement quickly, the FBI is often successful in getting the money returned.”
Persistence may also be important. “Had we not aggressively escalated this throughout different levels of Wells Fargo, it is likely the wire transfer would not have been reversed,” says Linda Hoverman O’Neal, CRS, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based RE/MAX Metro Realty real estate agent recently affected by a wire transfer fraud. “We had to raise a lot of hell and drive everyone a little crazy. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
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