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Kent County Sheriff: More victims in home buying wire scams

The home buyer received an email, which appeared to be legitimate and included the address of the home they were purchasing.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich-- It's tough to find and buy a house in Grand Rapids, so when you are able to snag one, you probably want to go through the process of closing as quickly as possible so you don't run the risk of it falling through. Kent County Sheriff's Department said that's exactly what happened in this case.

"It was a couple who was preparing to close on a loan for a house," Sgt. Joel Roon with the Kent County Sheriff's Department said.

The e-mail, which looked like it came from the bank, told them they needed to wire $180,000.

"People tend to want to comply because they don't want to hold up the closing and potentially lose a house," Roon said.

The couple wired the money, but fortunately, their bank's fraud department caught the wire and immediately froze the account.

"You have all these things to keep track of and it might be the first time you bought a home or dealt with this in a long time so you're not able to think about it in a way to protect yourself," Phil Catlett, President of the Better Business Bureau serving West Michigan said.

Catlett isn't surprised.

"I think these hackers, or these crooks are just saying 'OK, where's the money and where can I get a big chunk of it all at once,' and buying a home would certainly fit that," Catlett said.

He said this kind of thing is only going to get worse.

"Virtually every one of us, our private information is out there to some degree or another," Catlett said. "Because of the technology and the software programs that we can buy and create just about anything that we want."

In this particular situation, the email address was fraudulent. There was a very small difference between the fake one and the legitimate bank email address, which is easy to overlook. The sheriff's office is urging people to double and triple check everything that is asking you for money.

Both the Better Business Bureau and the sheriff's department encourage any wire transaction to happen in person, at the financial institution to verify that it is legitimate.

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