How do you protect your closing funds from wire fraud when buying in Southwest Florida?
Verify wire instructions by calling your title company at a number you looked up yourself — never one from an email, text, or incoming call — and agree on a spoken code word with your closing team before the first dollar moves. Florida ranked third in the nation for both cybercrime complaints and losses in the FBI's 2025 report, and real estate fraud losses nationally hit $275.1 million across 12,368 complaints, up 58% in a year. If a wire already went out, you have roughly 72 hours to act — and recovery attempts succeed more often than most people think.
By Mark & Dawn Borg | October 11, 2026
We've watched this nearly happen twice. Both times the email looked right — correct logo, correct file number, correct closing date, a polite note about "updated banking details." Both times the buyer called us first. That phone call is the whole defense.
Why this matters more here than almost anywhere
Southwest Florida has exactly the risk profile criminals look for. A large share of our closings involve buyers who are out of state when they go under contract, paying cash or close to it, handling the whole transaction by email from a thousand miles away. Add seasonal residents gone half the year, and you get big dollar amounts, remote parties, and few in-person moments to catch a forgery.
The numbers back that up. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 12,368 real estate complaints in 2025 totaling $275,110,419 — up from $174 million the year before. Business email compromise, the technique behind most closing-fund theft, accounted for 24,768 complaints and more than $3.04 billion. Florida placed third among all states, with 71,843 complaints and nearly $1.6 billion in losses.
Buyers over 60 were hit hardest: 201,266 complaints and $7.75 billion in losses, a 59% jump in one year, averaging $38,500 per victim. In a market built partly on retirees and second-home buyers, that isn't an abstract statistic.
And the fraud has moved past email. A 2026 industry survey of 245 title professionals found 59% had seen at least one seller-impersonation attempt in the prior year, up from 28% in 2024. The property types they flagged most often were vacant land (82%) and vacation homes (51%) — which is to say, a great deal of what trades in Lee and Collier County.
The email is never the weak point. The weak point is the moment you decide the email is good enough to act on.
The step-by-step: protecting your funds
1. Get wire instructions once, in person or by phone, early. Ask your title company for the wiring details at the start of the transaction, verbally, and write them down yourself. Then treat that as the only version. Legitimate wire instructions essentially never change mid-transaction.
2. Set a code word with your closing team. Agree on a verification phrase among you, us, and the title company at the beginning. No phrase, no wire moves. This one habit defeats both a spoofed email and a cloned voice, and it costs nothing to set up.
3. Call to verify — at a number you found independently. Look up the title company's number on their website or your signed contract. Never dial a number from the email containing the instructions, and never trust a number read to you over the phone.
4. Verify on a second channel. Confirm the details by phone and by a known email address or in person. One channel confirming itself is not verification.
5. Send a small test wire first if your bank allows it. Wire a nominal amount, confirm by phone that it landed, then send the balance. The delay is a day; the protection is the purchase price.
6. Call the title company the moment the wire leaves. Don't wait for them to confirm receipt. Ask them to verify arrival that day. Discovering a theft in hours instead of at the closing table is the difference between recovery and loss.
7. Assume any change request is fraud until proven otherwise. A last-minute email about new banking details, a routing number correction, or a different beneficiary name is the single most common form this takes. Treat it as an attack and verify from scratch.
If the money has already gone out
Act immediately — this is the part most people get wrong by hesitating. Call your bank's fraud department and request a wire recall, then call the receiving bank's fraud department and ask for a recall and an account freeze. Ask your bank specifically about the FBI's Financial Fraud Kill Chain, a process that can freeze funds when a qualifying wire is caught quickly — generally within 72 hours, at $50,000 or above, with a recall notice already initiated. Then notify your title company, report to the FBI at ic3.gov and to local law enforcement, and change the passwords on the email account involved.
Here is the part worth knowing in advance, because it contradicts what buyers are often told: a wire is not automatically gone. In 2025 the Kill Chain was used in 3,900 incidents covering $1.16 billion in attempted theft and successfully froze $679 million — a 58% success rate. Speed is what determines which side of that number you land on.
Florida-specific nuances worth knowing
A title company, not an attorney, holds your money. Florida closings run through a title company, so the title company is who you verify with — and the only party who should ever be receiving your funds. We walk through the rest of that sequence in our guide to closing day in Florida.
Lee County gives you a free fraud alarm — use it. The Lee Clerk's Property Fraud Alert emails you within 24 hours whenever a deed, mortgage, or other land record is recorded against your name or parcel ID. It's free, you can register names, trusts, and multiple parcels, and under Florida law your email isn't public record. It can't stop a fraudulent filing, but it tells you within a day. Collier County's Clerk offers a comparable records-alert service through its COR Access portal — confirm current registration details with the Clerk directly.
Lee County has taken this more seriously than anywhere else in the state. From July 2023 through June 2025, the Lee Clerk ran Florida's only property-fraud pilot requiring government photo ID to record a deed, collecting 190,667 ID records against 76,866 recorded deeds. Clerk Kevin Karnes put it plainly: "even one stolen home is one too many." The resulting report recommended requiring Florida-based notarization for real estate transactions — a direct response to deeds notarized out of state or abroad.
The rest of the math doesn't change. Doc stamps still run $0.70 per $100 of sale price, customarily paid by the seller. Fraud prevention doesn't alter your closing costs — only how carefully the money moves.
Red flags to watch for
- Any change to banking details after the first set. Routing number "corrections," a new beneficiary bank, or a different account name late in the process. This is the classic version.
- Urgency attached to money. "Wire today or we lose the closing date." Real closings have deadlines; real title companies don't manufacture panic to move funds.
- A phone call that knows too much. Voice cloning needs only a few minutes of audio, and agents and loan officers are all over podcasts and video. A caller sounding right is not verification — vishing rose sharply through 2024 and 2025 and is now a leading phishing method.
- A seller who won't appear. No in-person, video, or phone contact; a push for a mail-away signing or a seller-chosen notary; an all-cash sale priced oddly below market; documents notarized abroad. The FBI's June 2026 advisory on parcel-owner impersonation lists exactly these.
- A seller who doesn't know their own property. Can't produce a survey or tax records, vague about boundaries or history — a particular tell on vacant land.
How a buyer's agent protects you here
Most of this protection is procedural, and procedure is what gets dropped when a closing gets busy. What we do on every file: set the code word at the start, make sure wire instructions reach you from one verified source only, confirm independently before you send anything, and call the title company the day your wire goes out. On the seller side, we press for identity verification and flag a seller who won't appear on video — especially on land and second homes, where impersonation concentrates.
We're not attorneys or your bank, and this isn't legal advice. But knowing who should have your wiring details, and who definitely shouldn't, is the kind of thing worth sorting out before you're three days from closing. If you're buying in Naples, Bonita Springs, Estero, Fort Myers, or Cape Coral — particularly from out of state — we'll set the protocol up with you at contract. Buyers handling a purchase remotely should also read our guide to buying a home sight unseen.
Frequently asked questions
Can a fraudulent wire actually be recovered?
Sometimes, and more often than buyers are told — but only if you move fast. The FBI's Financial Fraud Kill Chain was used in 3,900 incidents in 2025 and froze $679 million of $1.16 billion in attempted theft, a 58% success rate. The practical window is about 72 hours from the transfer, so call your bank's fraud department the moment you suspect something.
Who should ever send me wire instructions?
Your title company, and no one else. Not your lender's assistant, not your agent, not a "closing coordinator" who appears late in the process. If instructions reach you from anyone else, or arrive revised, verify by calling the title company at a number you looked up independently.
What is seller impersonation, and why does it matter in Southwest Florida?
Criminals use public records and stolen data to pose as the owner of a property — usually one that sits empty — and sell it out from under them, directing proceeds to an account they control. Title professionals flagged vacant land (82%) and vacation homes (51%) as the most common targets in a 2026 survey, and Lee and Collier County have a great deal of both. Registering for your county Clerk's free fraud alert is the simplest countermeasure for an owner.
Does title insurance cover this?
It depends which fraud you mean. A standard owner's policy may cover forgery and the cost of clearing title after a fraudulent deed — the FBI points owners to that post-closing protection. It generally does not replace closing funds you wired to a criminal. Ask your title company what your policy covers before closing, not after.
The short version: one phone call, to a number you found yourself, placed before the money moves. Everything else in this guide is a backup for the day that call doesn't happen.
About Mark & Dawn Borg
Mark & Dawn Borg lead The Borg Group at Downing-Frye Realty, a luxury real estate team serving Southwest Florida's most sought-after communities — from Bonita Springs and Estero to Naples, Fort Myers, and Cape Coral. With deep roots in the local market and combined expertise spanning single-family homes, condos, new construction, waterfront properties, and investment real estate, they specialize in guiding buyers relocating from out of state, sellers ready to make their next move, and clients seeking their perfect piece of Southwest Florida. Reach the team at theborggroup.com or by phone at 239-350-4474 | 239-293-1616. Live Where Life Feels Better.