By Kara McGregor, Independence Title’s Sr. VP of Branding and Public Relations

Real Estate transactions are a rich target for fraudsters and cyber criminals, with valuable assets and staggering amounts of money changing hands quickly when the property is mortgaged, bought, and sold. From increasingly sophisticated schemes to divert money from transactions to criminals impersonating property owners in order to sell their assets and steal the proceeds from the sale, real estate transactions are ground zero for fraud.

Independence Title works with CertifID to protect your money and property and to maintain the integrity of real estate transactions.

Independence Title’s Texas Escrow Manager, Karen Burnett, says fraud is a daily concern for title insurance providers. “Statistically, one in three transactions is targeted for wire fraud, which absolutely tracks with what we see in the day-to-day. Specifically, for seller impersonation fraud, two years ago, we maybe saw one a month. Today, we review multiple attempts per week. We have added to our team and implemented specific fraud prevention training. CertifID is one of our secret weapons because we can no longer rely on standard practices. They verify and protect identities, banking information, and money,” said Burnett.

The leading wire fraud prevention solution in the nation, CertifID partners with the U.S. Secret Service, has protected billions of dollars in transactions and has helped recover millions in stolen funds. By leveraging industry-leading security practices and real-time identity verification, CertifID can quickly identify scam email accounts in addition to validating individual identities with multi-factor authentication practices.

“These attackers are impersonating parties to the transaction in order to divert money to untraceable accounts. It’s vital to work with a title company that uses CertifID. We’ve seen billions of dollars worth of attempted fraud in recent years, and no one should be relying on just their own training and human instincts to spot these criminals,” said Pitman. CertifID’s secure verification process can be handled in 60 seconds on a smartphone. To find out more about how CertifID protects your transaction, talk to your Independence Title Escrow Officer. Have a safe and successful summer real estate season!