Is It Safe to Wire Money to a Title Company?

Wiring money to a title company is safe when you verify the wiring instructions by phone before you send the funds. The transfer system itself is reliable: closings run on Fedwire, the Federal Reserve’s real-time settlement network, and payments through it are final once the receiving bank credits the account.¹ The danger is not the wire. It is wire fraud — criminals who intercept or spoof the title company’s instructions so your money lands in their account instead of the escrow account. In 2024, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged more than 9,300 real estate fraud complaints with losses of roughly $174 million.²

Why Closings Run on Wire Transfers

A title company has to pay the seller, the lender, the agents, and the local recording office at the same moment the deed changes hands. That requires money the recipients can rely on immediately. Fedwire provides that: under Regulation J, a Fedwire credit is final and irrevocable the moment it posts to the receiving bank.³

ACH transfers settle in batches and can be reversed under certain circumstances. Checks can take days to clear. Neither gives the closing table the certainty it needs. That same irrevocability, though, is what makes wire fraud so painful: if the money reaches a criminal’s account, your bank cannot simply reverse it the way it could an ACH debit or a check.

How Real Estate Wire Fraud Actually Works

The typical scheme is patient. Criminals compromise the email account of a real estate agent, a loan officer, or someone at the title company, and they read along quietly, sometimes for weeks. As closing approaches, they send you an email that looks almost identical to a legitimate one: company logos, familiar formatting, the right names. The sender’s address is off by a character or two, and the account and routing numbers point to an account they control. Real estate transactions are a favorite target because the dollar amounts are high and the deadlines are tight.²

Once you authorize the wire yourself, your bank’s hands are largely tied. Recovery depends on how quickly law enforcement can freeze the receiving account before the money is moved out again.

Red Flags in Wiring Instructions

Before you treat any wiring instruction as real, scan it for the patterns that show up again and again in these scams:

A sender address that is close to the legitimate one but off by a letter, number, or domain. “closings@titIecompany.com” with a capital I in place of a lowercase L is a classic example.
A late change to instructions you already received. Any email or voicemail revising account numbers at the last minute should be treated as suspicious until you confirm by phone.
Pressure or urgency, especially warnings that closing will fall through if you do not wire immediately.
Language, formatting, or sign-offs that do not match earlier emails from the same person.
Any suggestion that you keep the transfer confidential or avoid calling the office to confirm.

How to Verify the Instructions Before You Send

One phone call is the step that protects you. Before you move any money, call the title company and confirm the wiring details with the escrow officer directly.

Look up the phone number yourself from a source you already trust: the signed purchase contract, the company’s official website, or a business card you received in person. Do not call a number printed in the wiring email. A fraudster who spoofed the email will happily answer the phone number they put in it.

On the call, read the routing number, the account number, and the beneficiary name back to the escrow officer and have them confirm each one matches the firm’s actual escrow account. If any digit does not match, stop. Do not send the wire. Tell your agent, the title company, and your bank right away. One wrong digit means the instructions were tampered with.

What to Confirm on the Call

The title company will send a Wire Transfer Instructions form. These are the fields worth confirming out loud:

Beneficiary name, which must match the title company’s registered corporate name exactly.
Receiving bank name and the nine-digit ABA routing number, which routes the funds through the Federal Reserve system.⁴
The escrow account number at the receiving bank.
The escrow or file number for your transaction, which goes in the wire’s memo field so the title company can match the deposit to your file.
The branch address where the escrow account is held.

Sending the Wire

You can send the wire at a branch or through your bank’s secure online portal. In person, bring the verified instructions and a government-issued ID. Online, type the beneficiary details in by hand from the verified instructions rather than copying from an email, since hidden characters in a pasted string can cause problems.

Domestic outgoing wire fees at most banks run between $20 and $40. Once the wire goes through, your bank will give you a confirmation that includes an IMAD (Input Message Accountability Data) number, the unique tracking identifier assigned to every Fedwire payment.¹ Keep that confirmation. You will need the IMAD if the transfer has to be traced or if the title company asks for proof of payment.

Fedwire runs from 9:00 p.m. ET the prior calendar day through 7:00 p.m. ET on each business day, and individual transfers within that window usually settle in a few hours.⁵ Your own bank has an earlier internal cutoff for same-day wires, often somewhere between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. ET. A wire sent after the cutoff goes out the next business day. If you have not heard confirmation from the escrow officer within a few hours of sending, call both the bank and the title company so a clerical error does not derail the closing.

If You Think You’ve Been Scammed, Act Within 72 Hours

Speed decides whether you get the money back. Law enforcement can sometimes freeze a receiving account before the criminal pulls the funds, but the window is short. Take these steps the moment you suspect anything is wrong:

Call your bank and request an immediate wire recall. Ask for a hold harmless letter or letter of indemnity, and confirm the recall request was actually submitted.⁶
Call the real escrow officer at a verified number so the title company can work with the receiving bank on its end.
File a complaint at ic3.gov with the transaction date, amount, originating and beneficiary bank details, and any spoofed emails. IC3 coordinates with banks and law enforcement to try to recover domestic transfers.
Contact your local FBI field office. For international wires of $50,000 or more, the FBI can initiate a Financial Fraud Kill Chain to try to intercept the funds, but only if a SWIFT recall has been started and the transfer occurred within the last 72 hours.
File a police report and get the report number for any later insurance or legal claim.
Change passwords on your email and banking accounts and turn on two-factor authentication.

Report even smaller domestic transfers that fall below the FBI’s kill chain thresholds. IC3 and the receiving bank can sometimes freeze funds when the report comes in quickly.

Don’t Assume the Bank Will Reimburse You

Under UCC Article 4A, a bank may have to refund a payment if it accepted a truly unauthorized order without following commercially reasonable security procedures. When you authorized the wire yourself, though, even after being tricked by a fraudster, the loss generally stays with you. That is why verifying the instructions before you send is worth far more than any legal claim after the fact.

1
Federal Reserve Financial Services. Fedwire Funds Service
2
Internet Crime Complaint Center. 2024 IC3 Annual Report
3
eCFR. 12 CFR Part 210 Subpart B – Funds Transfers Through the Fedwire Funds Service
4
American Bankers Association. Routing Number Policy and Procedures
5
Federal Reserve Financial Services. Wholesale Services Operating Hours
6
Internet Crime Complaint Center. Account Takeover Fraud via Impersonation of Financial Institution Support