ALTA Member Company Knight Barry Title Warns Fake Sellers Spoofing Title Company Websites

August 27, 2024

Knight Barry Title is warning its partners, industry colleagues and consumers about a “new twist” in tactics by cybercriminals engaged in seller impersonation fraud.

Over the last month, the Wisconsin-based title company has thwarted multiple attempts by scammers to set up fake webpages to look Knight Barry's website in an attempt to bypass the scrutiny of title professionals and closing officers.

It’s what company leadership calls the next step for seller impersonation fraud: impersonating the title company by creating a fake webpage that is similar to a legitimate title company. After all, it’s due diligence by title companies across the country that often exposes this type of fraudulent activity before it’s too late.   

“It’s a pretty good little scam. By doing this, the cybercriminals have the listing done, they have the real estate purchase contract done, and now they have the title company,” said Knight Barry Title General Counsel Cheri Hipenbecker. “We’ve had people realize that after communicating with the impersonators, maybe something seemed off, so they’ve Googled Knight Barry, found our website and called our people, and our real people have said, ‘That’s a scam.’”

The company has shared these incidents with the Secret Service and has had some of the scammers' bank accounts shut down. It has also invested in a domain twister tool to be alerted anytime a similar-sounding domain to any of Knight Barry Title’s current websites is registered. This helps the company’s IT and legal teams uncover spoofed sites. Often, the new webpages are either off by a single character or intentionally deceitful in another way.

“As an entire industry, the more protection we offer to people, the better,” said Craig Haskins, CEO of Knight Barry Title. “It helps us all. Plus, I want our customers to know we caught these scammers and are continuing to do what it takes to keep transactions safe and secure.”

According to a study by ALTA and ndp | analytics, seller impersonation fraud attempts continue to increase as 28% of title companies experienced at least one of these incidents in 2023.

For more information on this topic, check out this video featuring Haskins and Hipenbecker. In addition to recording this message, Knight Barry Title has developed warning language so more real estate professionals and the general public are aware of this new strategy from scammers.  

“The criminal purchases one or multiple fake domains and using this fraudulent domain, they email researched clients with a payment reminder/invoice that includes new wiring instructions to a fraudulently created bank account,” one proposed new warning reads in part.

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