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After a yearlong search, Rana Robillard was elated to learn she'd beaten three other bidders for a house in the leafy California suburb of Orinda, just outside of San Francisco. So when Robillard, who works at a software startup, received an email in late January from her mortgage broker with directions to wire a $398,359.58 down payment to a JPMorgan Chase account, she wasted no time sending the money. After all, the email appeared to be a response to one Robillard had sent her broker asking about final steps before the closing, which was rapidly approaching. But on Jan. 30, the day after she'd sent the wire, Robillard got what looked like a duplicate request for the down payment, and it dawned on her that she had fallen for a scam — one that would throw her life into turmoil for the next six months. To her horror, instead of sending a down payment for her future home to the title company, as she believed she had done, Robillard had been tricked into sending her life savings to a criminal. "That's when I went into a full panic," Robillard, 55, told CNBC, which verified the details of her story with the four banks involved.

Rana Robillard, an Oakland-based tech executive, in front of the home in Orinda, CA that she attempted to purchase earlier this year. Courtesy: Rana Robillard

What happened to Robillard, a 25-year veteran of tech companies including cybersecurity firm HackerOne, speaks to the increasingly sophisticated nature of cybercrime. Fraudsters are able to penetrate the email systems of mortgage brokers, real estate agents, lawyers or other advisors, waiting for the perfect moment to strike by sending emails or phone calls that appear to be from trusted parties. Real estate, with its large transaction sizes and frequent use of wire transfers, has proven to be an especially lucrative target for criminals. Wires are faster than other forms of payment, typically closing within 24 hours, can handle far larger sums and are often irreversible, making them ideal for fraud. Scams involving fake emails in real estate deals have exploded over the last decade, rising from less than $9 million in losses in 2015 to $446.1 million by 2022, according to FBI data.

Once criminals have a victim's money, they quickly shuffle it to other bank accounts before withdrawing it as cash, converting it into crypto or exploiting mules to launder the funds, according to Naftali Harris, CEO of anti-fraud startup SentiLink. That's why recovering funds in wire fraud can be so difficult, he added. "The faster the fraudster moves it out of that first account and the more institutions they move it to, the better for them, because it just gets murkier and harder to track," Harris said. That's what initially happened to Robillard's funds, which went from a JPMorgan Chase account to ones at Citigroup and Ally Bank , according to people with knowledge of her case who weren't authorized to speak publicly. Robillard had alerted her bank, Charles Schwab , of the fraud on Jan. 30; within days, an official working in the cyber branch of the San Francisco division of the FBI had this message: "Funds have been located and are frozen," the official said, according to a Feb. 2 email reviewed by CNBC. "That's all I'm allowed to tell you."

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