What to Do Right Away if Your Title & Escrow Company Is Hit With Wire Fraud

You’re a title & escrow professional who just discovered your firm wired funds to a fraudster. Panic hits. What do you do?

Take a breath, then move immediately. The faster you act, the better your odds of getting the money back.

“The firms that treat the clock as already running are the ones who stand the best chance,” says Erin Tracey Jenner, a 35-year veteran of the title & escrow industry who serves as Qualia’s Director of Managed Services and a member of Qualia Fraud Recovery Service (Qualia FRS).

You know your systems better than anyone, so what you do when fraud happens will be personalized. It will be some combination of actions that you take yourself and working with partners who are highly experienced with these stressful situations and manage through them every day. The steps suggested here can help you respond quickly and effectively.

Notify company leadership

When wire fraud is discovered, it’s important to alert the right people inside the company. Employees should know the company’s fraud response plan before they need it. Clear steps and contact information help the team stay calm and move fast. Key contacts typically include the employee’s manager, the owner or CEO, IT, and accounting.

Call your sending bank immediately

Phone your bank’s fraud department. Don’t email. Ask for a wire recall, SWIFT recall, or a hold on the funds. Have this ready: payee name, payee bank, account and routing numbers, dollar amount, date and time of the wire, and the Fedwire reference.

You should also:

• Request a Hold Harmless Letter. “It protects the receiving bank from risk it may face, so it can freeze or return funds faster,” Jenner explains.
• Ask your bank to start the FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain. “Not every transfer is eligible, but this process can trace how the fraud happened and move quickly to freeze funds before they’re gone,” Jenner says.
• Get the receiving bank involved to lock down the account. The receiving bank might not engage with you since you aren’t their customer, so Jenner recommends asking your sending bank to make that outreach while it recalls the wire.

Get help from a wire fraud recovery service that knows title & escrow

Bringing in a team that specializes in wire fraud recovery for title & escrow can boost recovery chances. About 30% of victimized firms worked with a fraud recovery service in 2025, according to the Qualia 2026 Wire Fraud Report. A good recovery team already has relationships with banks and law enforcement, which means faster action and clearer guidance.

Qualia Fraud Recovery Service (Qualia FRS) is available at no additional cost to Qualia Core customers. Instead of leaving a victimized title & escrow company to file law enforcement reports and track down bank updates on its own, a Qualia FRS specialist reviews the case immediately and calls the customer directly to begin providing guidance and help. 

Qualia FRS reports the incident to a dedicated federal law enforcement contact it has an existing relationship with to help the case get traction. It also helps with time-sensitive steps like submitting a complaint to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Qualia FRS stays engaged with financial institutions, law enforcement, and your title & escrow firm until the case is resolved.

Qualia Fraud Recovery Service’s recent successes include:

• Recovered 99% of $82,000 wired to a fraudster, within one week of learning of the incident. That’s far faster than the typical 30-to-90-day (or longer) timetable.
• Recovered all $41,149 in seller proceeds a title & escrow agency mistakenly sent to a fraudster.

File a report with IC3

Whether you’ve involved a fraud recovery team or are going it alone, submit a complaint to IC3, a hub for reporting cyber-enabled crime. A fraud recovery team like Qualia FRS can help you file this quickly and with the right documentation. 

Filing can trigger the FBI’s Recovery Asset Team, which works with the receiving bank to freeze funds before they move. The FBI says the best chance of recovery comes when frauds are reported within 72 hours, so file as soon as you can with full documentation: incident date, amount, where the money went, and anything you have on the fraudster.

Inform transaction parties

The American Land Title Association (ALTA) recommends calling the people connected to the closing using known, trusted phone numbers: buyer, seller, agents, lender, underwriter, and notary. Underwriters can even help with recovery. Fraudsters often target more than one party in a transaction, so notifying everyone fast can stop criminals from victimizing someone else.

Share the facts and suggest pausing pending transfers until the situation is resolved. ALTA offers sample outreach language:

• “There appears to have been [attempted] wire fraud associated with this transaction. We recommend that you review your email security and update passwords and take any other appropriate security measures immediately. For the remainder of this transaction, all communication will occur using known, trusted, telephone numbers.”

Report to local authorities

The FBI typically investigates wire fraud, but a local police report adds to the official record and can support an insurance claim. ALTA recommends reporting to local field offices of the FBI and Secret Service. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) may also be able to help through its Rapid Response Program (RRP), which has helped interdict $1.8 billion in stolen funds on behalf of U.S.-based victims. To initiate the RRP process, victims or their financial institutions must file a complaint with law enforcement, such as IC3 or the Secret Service.

Pursue the recovery, then strengthen your defenses

A professional wire fraud recovery service will provide regular updates on where things stand. Stay engaged with that progress. If you are navigating the recovery process alone, push for answers from banks and law enforcement. Was a recall issued? Were funds frozen? Where’s the money?

Once the immediate response is handled, review the incident with your team. Walk through how the transaction was compromised, then update policies, procedures, and even technology for better security. This can include changing passwords and setting up multi-factor authentication.

In an ideal world, wire fraud never succeeds. Prevention is the best strategy. Qualia Shield can help. It runs wire verifications automatically on every wire, making transactions more secure. But if fraud does strike, swift strategic action gives you the best chance of reclaiming funds. An industry-specific recovery service like Qualia FRS can propel that effort.

“Fraudsters move fast and strategically,” says Jenner. “Your response has to be just as fast and strategic.”

Learn more about how Qualia can help protect your business from fraud, and help you recover funds if you’re ever victimized. Contact us today.