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BEWARE - SUSPICIOUS EMAIL AHEAD....

by Michael H. Wasserman 


We live in a terribly unsafe world transacting real estate purchases and sales. There is a lot of money passing between Buyers and Sellers and Lenders and Title Insurance Companies. Unfortunately, there are a great many scammers out there trying to divert those funds away from the deal and into their pockets.

In the coming weeks, I intend to write about several new rules and protocols being implemented to try to avoid calamities of this sort. For now, I wish to alert Realtors and other lawyers about an increasingly common email fraud. 

I am seeing multiple emails every day from lenders and title companies with the seemingly innocuous email caption: HUD-1 Approval***.

Hud-1, of course, the form number for the federally mandated settlement statement used in most every residential purchase/sale and mortgage re-finance transaction. We need these forms in order to advise our clients of their closing costs and the amounts of money they need to deliver (or expect to receive) from closings.

The messages read - to one extent or another -
Hello
Please find HUD-1 Approved!
CLICK HERE to view attached
Thanks

Unfortunately, these are phony links and fake messages. DO NOT CLICK THRU

 these message take the reader to a phishing web site posing as a google docs page.

Be smart, be safe

check to see if the sender is a known/trusted closing partner.
ask yourseelf, if this the way he/she normally sends me my closing statements?


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