David and Rebecca Brown were thrilled. After a lifetime of work, they were now ready to buy a second home in the Blue Ridge mountains to use in their retirement.
Working with a realtor, the couple, both in their 60s, found a beautiful 800-square-foot, two-bedroom condo in Wintergreen, right next to the ski resort.
They negotiated the asking price of $249,000 down to $241,000 and put down $2,000 in earnest money while they waited for closing on July 1.
Their realtor had recommended they work with local real estate attorney David Thelen. A few weeks later they got email instructions from Thelen with details on how to make a bank transfer to pay the $239,000 balance.
David Brown says he followed them to a T.
The Browns received an email from the attorney, confirming that the money had been received and the closing was still set for July 1.
That’s when the deal came apart and they lost their money.
When the Browns showed up at Thelen’s office with their realtor on July 1, Thelen informed them that the deal had fallen through because he had never received their cash. He had never sent them the email with the instructions, and they had missed the noon deadline to bring the money to him.
Brown, who spent much of his working life in IT security, says he was “shocked” that someone was able to hijack the deal and steal his money.
Thelen, the attorney, who has worked in real estate for 50 years, says he, too, was a victim. He said he has no clue how the scammer got ahold of information about the deal, to include phone numbers and emails, and how the scammer was able to set up a fake email address that ghosted his.
He told the Browns that his insurance would cover the loss, but that was not the case.
Brown says it took weeks, but their bank, Bank of America, was able to get back $69,000 from Wells Fargo, which had handled the other side of the transaction. The rest was lost.
The FBI has been investigating this cybercrime, but so far, the culprit who stole the money and a couple’s dream has gotten away with it.
The Browns have filed a lawsuit in Charlottesville Circuit Court against Thelen, and the realtor is still hoping to get more money back.
Thelen says he expects the insurance company to defend him because what happened was not his fault. He says the Browns didn’t do their “due diligence.” He says that in the past, he never handled transactions like this via email, but things changed during the pandemic, and it is common now.
The condo was sold to someone else, and the Browns were unable to get their original $2,000 in up-front money back from the seller after the deal fell through.
The Browns’ advice to others buying homes is to “take a paper check to closing.”
Thelen would only say that “scams are getting very sophisticated and innocent people are getting hurt.”
The FBI’s Internet Complaint Center reports that in the last year, almost 1,500 seniors lost a total of $65 million in real estate scams.
Overall, there was a 14% increase in elderly victims filing complaints to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC reports that adults over age 60 have lost over $1.6 billon to all types of scams in 2023.
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