Commercial Investment Real Estate March/April 2017 | Page 16

FINANCING
FOCUS
Theft Alert
Devise ways to foil scam artists using wire transfer ploys.
housands of dollars are electronically exchanged in
commercial real estate closings without any hesitation
from the brokers, buyers, or banks every day. But how
secure is the money during these wire transfers?
Hackers send out emails posing as agents and ask for money
to be wired. This common scam is completed when a hacker
manages to access buyers’ email addresses or the accounts of
other participants in real estate transactions. They then send
fake emails asking buyers to wire money to an account overseas
— where wired funds will disappear forever.
To prevent wire transfer scams from disrupting these
transactions, commercial real estate companies can take the
following steps.
T
Launch Preventive Measures
Educate employees. Firms’ employees must remember to never
feel rushed to give out confidential information. Many scam art-
ists will speed up the process, so that they accomplish what they
need quickly without any background check.
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March | April 2017
Company leaders should always communicate these warning
signs of wire transfer scams to employees by making IT policies
and procedures readily available and visible. Consider posting
these policies on the company’s intranet page, as well as promot-
ing Cyber Awareness Month every October as a time to raise
awareness of the typical scams targeting companies.
All employees should confirm wire transfer requests by phone
using the executive’s phone number listed in the corporate directory
rather than one included in the signature of a suspicious email.
Typically, scammers include phone numbers in an email sig-
nature and will staff that phone number anticipating that an
employee will call to confirm the request by phone. Confirmation
and authentication of the individual requesting money can thwart
these criminal attempts.
Businesses should implement a phishing filter for email sys-
tems, which will help eliminate some of the fraudulent messages
that may be targeting a firm’s employees.
Additionally, businesses must provide a way for associates to
report any suspicious emails to the IT Department. This will
COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE
by Greg Cryan