Milestone SafeFunds · Emergency
Wire fraud emergency: the first hour
If you believe closing funds were wired to a fraudulent account, work the five steps below in order, starting now. No panic and no blame — this sequence is built from publicly documented bank and FBI procedures, and speed is the one variable you control.
Have these details in hand
Every call below moves faster when you can read these off without searching:
- The exact dollar amount of the wire
- The date and time it was sent
- Your sending bank and account
- The receiving bank, account name, and account number
- Any reference or confirmation numbers
- The suspicious email itself — do not delete it
What this page can promise — and what it can’t
Nobody — not a title company, not a bank, not the FBI — can promise that a fraudulent wire comes back. What exists is publicly documented machinery built to try, and it runs on two inputs you control: how complete your report is, and how fast it arrives. That is why this page is a numbered sequence, not an essay.
Work the steps in order. Each one feeds the next.
Work in order
Five calls, in sequence
Your bank first — it holds the recall levers. Federal reporting next — it powers the response mechanisms. Then us — we hold the file.
Call your bank's fraud department — now
Use the number on your card, your statement, or the bank's own website — never a number from the suspicious email. Say the words “fraudulent wire transfer” and request an immediate recall and hold. Have ready: the exact amount, the date and time the wire was sent, your sending account, and every destination detail you have — receiving bank, account name, account number, reference numbers.
Ask for the interbank recall — explicitly
Banks maintain recall procedures between institutions. Ask your bank, in those words, to initiate its interbank recall process — a formal recall request to the receiving bank — and to flag the receiving account for suspected fraud. Before you hang up, get a case number and a direct callback line; you will reference both repeatedly today.
File at IC3.gov — right away, completely
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (ic3.gov) is the federal intake point for exactly this event, and downstream response mechanisms work from what you file. Submit the complaint immediately and include every detail: amounts, dates and times, both banks, account numbers, the fraudulent wiring instructions themselves, and the sender's email address exactly as it appears — character by character.
Call your local FBI field office — ask about the Financial Fraud Kill Chain
For wires of $50,000 or more reported within the last 72 hours, the FBI and FinCEN operate a publicly documented rapid-response process — the Financial Fraud Kill Chain — that attempts to intercept fraudulent transfers before they scatter. Whether it can be used for your wire depends on facts the FBI confirms, including amount, timing, and destination. Your job is not to qualify the case; it is to report fast, completely, and through both channels — the IC3 filing and the field office call.
Call us
We will freeze activity on the file and document everything with you — the timeline, copies of the instructions, case numbers — and alert the other parties to the transaction through independently confirmed numbers, never by replying to the suspicious thread. If the fraudulent instructions claimed to be from Milestone Title, preserve that email and call us within minutes, not days.
Milestone Title
Mon–Fri 9:00am – 5:00pm · Evenings & weekends by appointment. If a communication claims to be from us, verify it by phone before acting on it.
While you work the phones
Preserve everything
The report is only as strong as the evidence behind it — and the attack may not be finished.
- Keep the fraudulent email — with full headers. Do not delete it, and stop replying to it.
- Notify the other parties by phone at numbers you verify independently — never by replying on the suspicious thread.
- Change the password and turn on multi-factor authentication for any email account that may be involved.
- Treat any follow-up instruction to “re-send” or “correct” the wire as part of the attack until verified by voice.
- Write down every call as you go: time, institution, person, case number.
After the first hour
What comes next
File a local police report
Report the event to your local police department and keep a copy — banks and insurers commonly ask for it during their investigations.
Keep one log, stay reachable
Your bank’s investigation and any FBI follow-up move on their own timelines. Keep every case number in a single log and stay reachable at the numbers you gave.
Legal questions go to an attorney
Questions about liability, insurance coverage, or recovery options are legal questions for an attorney you engage directly — Muroff, Milestone & Milestone, P.A., a separate firm, or any attorney you choose. Milestone Title, Co. does not provide legal services or legal advice.
The best time to read this page was before
The prevention story — the standing rules, the controls, and how funds actually move on a file — lives in the SafeFunds trust center.
This page is educational general information assembled for an emergency moment — it is not legal advice, and reading or following it does not create an attorney-client relationship or guarantee any outcome or recovery. The bank and FBI procedures described are public mechanisms operated by those institutions, not services of Milestone Title, Co.; whether and how they apply is decided by the banks and agencies involved. Where legal services become necessary, they are procured separately and directly from Muroff, Milestone & Milestone, P.A. — a separate entity, under its own written engagement, at additional fees the firm determines — or from any attorney you choose. If you receive a communication claiming to be from us that you did not expect, call 954.454.4522 before acting on it.