So…we recently re-financed (with same company who’s held our mortgage for 10+ years) for great rate (and to take some $$ out for a remodel project). Fast, quick and painless -or so we thought.
Our bank account received the correct wire transfer of funds. All good. Then, same day, our account received another wire transfer --for about three times the amount of the correct wire transfer. While I sure enjoy seeing $250K extra in my account, it’s obviously not ours. Has gone from pending to “ours”.
Have notified our loan agent, who contacted Title Company and they say all is good with our correct wire transfer. Have notified our (national, big) bank. Their online site is proving to be a circular nightmare, as is phoning them. Even resorted to tweeting them. Tweet reply gave me a wire fraud number to call. I did–and was told to go online and send a secure message. Which again, got nowhere. The bank (looking at you, JPM) seems wholly unconcerned about this. I just want to know how to protect our accounts!
I was so irritated that this has taken up a fair amount of my time in the past two days, that I transferred the incorrect wire amount to our savings account. Easy, peasy. But H was nervous about this…so I transferred it back to where it was.
Looking at the wire transfer info, it has our names and account number on it, but also an unfamiliar address, an east coast bank, etc.
To make me even more concerned…I received two phishing texts today, telling me that my account had unusual activity and was currently blocked…and if I wanted to re-activate, to click. Of course, I didn’t.
Some online searching produced this:
"A similar situation can be found in the real estate industry. Criminals identify the email accounts of real estate agents and brokers they found on social media. They hack directly into the accounts and identify emails that reference pending real estate deals. From these strings of emails, they gather details about the deal, such as the names of the parties, the title company involved, and other pertinent information.Then they send an email directly to the buyer or lender, making it appear as though it was sent by the real estate agent, mortgage loan officer, or title agency. These emails now direct the buyer or lender to wire the funds necessary to close escrow directly to a different bank account than provided in the preliminary report or in the escrow instructions, one setup by the criminal. The money is immediately withdrawn or transferred to another location. " Yikes!
So…I am coming to the wisdom here. Should I just wait and see? Keep hounding the bank? Head to Vegas? Any suggestions on what to do???
) so they did. They talked with someone who looked in their system and told them that they see it, it was a mistake, not to worry about it, the $ never actually landed in the bank, and (and this is indeed a quote) “You’ll never see that money”…well, wrong. The $ did land in the bank, they went back to the Social Security Administration office, with a checkbook in hand to write a check, and were told, (again a quote) “it’s been handled” - this went on another few months when this person finally gave up trying to return $ they’d “never see” - opened a savings account and put it in there for the sole purpose of separating it from their own money. To date, that money remains in that separate savings account, and likely will forever.