How to Pay for Property Abroad Safely: Escrow, Notary Accounts and Wire-Transfer Fraud (2026)

Published on: June 20, 2026

You can do everything else right, find a fair price, hire a good lawyer, verify the title, and still lose the entire purchase amount in a single afternoon. Not to a bad deal. To a wire transfer that went to the wrong account because someone sent you an email.

This is the highest-stakes moment of any cross-border purchase, because property payments are large, irreversible, and increasingly the target of organised fraud. The good news is that the defences are simple, cheap and almost completely effective, if you put them in place before you move money, not after. This guide explains how the fraud works, what safe payment actually looks like in different countries, and the small set of rules that, followed without exception, keep your money where it belongs.

How real-estate payment fraud actually works

The dangerous scam isn't sophisticated, and that's exactly why it works. It's a category the FBI calls business email compromise (BEC), and the property version runs like this:

Weeks before completion, criminals get into, or convincingly imitate, the email account of someone you trust in the transaction: your lawyer, your agent, the notary, or the title/escrow company. They watch the conversation quietly, learning the names, the amounts, the timeline and the tone. Then, at the precise moment you're expecting to send funds, you receive an email that looks exactly like the ones you've been getting, often from an address one character different from the real one, saying the banking details have changed and here are the "new" wire instructions. You wire your deposit or the full balance. It lands in the fraudster's account, is moved on within hours, and is gone.

It relies on three human things, not any technical exploit: trust (the email looks like it's from the right person), routine (you were already expecting to pay), and urgency ("we need this today to complete on time"). No malware required.

The FBI's records make the pattern concrete. In one case described in its 2025 internet-crime reporting, a buyer closing on a property received a compromised email purporting to be from the title company, containing wire instructions for over $1.3 million sent to a fraudulent account. That is a representative case, not an outlier.

The scale: this is the costliest cybercrime category in real estate

The numbers are sobering. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported total losses of $16.6 billion in 2024, a 33% jump on the previous year, rising again to roughly $20.9 billion in 2025. Within that, business email compromise, the category that targets property closings and other large payments, accounted for around $2.77 billion in 2024 losses across more than 21,000 reported incidents, making it one of the most financially damaging cybercrimes tracked. Cumulatively, the FBI has put combined domestic and international BEC exposure in the tens of billions of dollars over the past decade.

Two features make real estate a favourite target. The payments are unusually large, so a single successful hit is worth a fortune to the criminal. And the process involves multiple parties emailing each other about money on a known schedule, a perfect environment for a patient impersonator. And because these are reported US figures, they capture only a slice of a global problem: the same playbook runs against buyers in Europe, the Gulf and beyond, with stolen funds routinely routed through banks in several countries before they disappear.

What safe payment actually looks like

The principle behind every safe method is the same: your money should never go straight from your account to an individual's account on the strength of instructions you received electronically. It should pass through a regulated, neutral holding mechanism, against verified details. In practice that means one of the following, depending on the country.

Escrow (a regulated third party holds the funds). A licensed escrow agent, title company or attorney holds your money and releases it only when defined conditions are met, clean title transferred, deed signed, registration done. Escrow is standard in the US and available in several other markets, and it's the gold standard because the money is never exposed to a direct buyer-to-seller transfer. In Dubai, for example, the regulatory framework requires off-plan buyer funds to go into project escrow accounts rather than a developer's general account, and using an unlicensed broker is dangerous partly because it bypasses exactly this protection.

The notary's or lawyer's regulated client account. Across continental Europe and Latin America, the safe rail is usually the notary's or your lawyer's official client account, a ring-fenced, regulated account separate from their business money, subject to professional rules and audit. Funds sit there and are disbursed at completion. This is the normal, safe way to pay in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and similar systems.

Bank-guaranteed staged payments for off-plan. When you're paying a developer in instalments before a building exists, each payment should be protected by a bank guarantee or held in escrow, so that if the developer fails, your money is recoverable. No guarantee, no payment.

What you should never accept is a request to wire money directly into a personal bank account, a "holding deposit" to an agent's own account, or a payment to an account in a third country with no documented reason. Those are the structures fraud lives in.

The rules that stop wire fraud, follow them without exception

These are not optional best practices. Treat them as absolute, because the cost of breaking one is the whole purchase price.

1. Never trust banking details that arrive or change by email. Email is the attack surface. Any instruction to send funds, and especially any change to previously agreed details, must be independently verified before you act.

2. Verify every wire instruction by voice, using a number you already had. Before sending anything, call your lawyer, notary or escrow agent on a phone number you obtained earlier and independently, from their official website or your signed engagement letter, not a number written in the email. Read the account details back to them and have them confirm digit by digit. This one phone call defeats the entire scam.

3. Be most suspicious exactly when you're told to hurry. "We must complete today," "the seller will walk," "the rate is about to change", urgency is the fraudster's primary tool, designed to stop you making that verification call. Last-minute changes are the single biggest red flag.

4. Confirm the account name, not just the number. The receiving account should be in the name of the regulated entity you expect (the notary's office, the law firm's client account, the escrow company), never an unrelated individual or company.

5. Send a small test transfer first where you can. For large balances, a small initial transfer that the recipient confirms received, before you send the rest, limits the damage if something is wrong.

6. Use secure channels and watch the email address. Fraudulent emails frequently come from a lookalike domain with one altered or added character. Check the full sender address, not just the display name, every time money is discussed.

If you think you've been defrauded: move within hours

Speed is everything. Stolen funds can sometimes be frozen if you act immediately, but the window is short, often hours, not days.

Call your bank at once and report the fraudulent transfer, requesting an immediate recall and asking what indemnification or recovery process they can start. Contact the receiving bank too if you can. Report it to the authorities without delay, in the US, file with the FBI's IC3 at ic3.gov, which operates a Recovery Asset Team that, working with banks, has had a meaningful success rate in freezing fraudulent transfers when complaints come in fast; in other countries, report to the police and the relevant financial-crime or cyber-fraud unit. Also notify the real lawyer, agent or escrow company whose communications were impersonated, because their systems may be compromised and other clients at risk.

The brutal reality is that recovery is far from guaranteed and depends almost entirely on how fast you move. Which is the whole argument for prevention: the verification phone call that takes two minutes is worth more than any recovery effort after the money has gone.

This article touches on financial crime and large transactions; it's general information, not legal or financial advice. For your specific purchase, rely on an independent lawyer who represents you, and confirm payment procedures directly with the regulated professionals handling your transaction.

Frequently asked questions

What is the safest way to pay for a property abroad?
Through a regulated, neutral holding mechanism rather than a direct transfer to the seller or an agent: a licensed escrow account, or the notary's or your lawyer's official client account, with the banking details verified by phone before you send anything. The money should never go straight to an individual's personal account on emailed instructions.

How common is real-estate wire fraud?
Common and rising. The FBI reported record overall fraud losses of $16.6 billion in 2024, climbing toward $20.9 billion in 2025, with business email compromise, the category that targets property payments, among the costliest at roughly $2.77 billion in 2024 alone. Property closings are a favoured target because the payments are so large.

I got an email saying the wire instructions changed at the last minute. What do I do?
Treat it as fraud until proven otherwise. Do not send anything. Call the person who supposedly sent it on a phone number you already had (not one from the email) and confirm. Last-minute changes to banking details are the single most reliable sign of a wire-fraud attempt.

Can I get my money back if I wire it to a fraudster?
Sometimes, but only if you act within hours. Contact your bank immediately to request a recall, report to the authorities (in the US, ic3.gov) right away, and notify the impersonated party. Recovery is possible but never guaranteed, which is why verifying details beforehand matters far more than recovering afterward.

A note from JanusHermes

JanusHermes covers cross-border property across 50+ countries with a single editorial rule: no hype, no half-truths, including about the risks. Explore our country guides and buyer-safety resources.

Disclaimer. This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For your specific purchase, rely on an independent lawyer who represents you, and confirm payment procedures directly with the regulated professionals handling your transaction. JanusHermes is a property information and listing platform and accepts no liability for any action taken in reliance on this content.

A note on the numbers: where no source is named, the market figures in this article (prices, yields, costs) are indicative estimates compiled from publicly available market data and industry reporting at the time of writing. Markets move and rules change, so treat them as a starting point and verify current figures with official sources before acting on them.