01
A title or escrow domain that is not quite the real one
A one-character variant of a title company's domain is the classic closing-wire setup.
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Commercial real estate: one score out of 1,000 in about 10 seconds
Earnest money and closing funds move on a date everyone knows in advance, by email instruction, in amounts that do not come back.
The buyer, the investor, or the closing coordinator — often reading wire instructions on a phone the morning of funding. Paste the email address or the web address, read the reasons, and make the call. The first check needs no account.
Typical wire $25K – $2M · illustrative transaction size, not a loss estimate
What matters here
3 tells that carry the most weight
02
Wire instructions arriving by email alone
The instruction is the target. Confirm it by voice on a number from the engagement letter, not the email.
03
Mail with no sender rules
It makes mail that looks like it came from the closing party easy to send.
What a check reads
5 public record types, every time
On a closing, the near-match name is the one that costs the most: the domain in the wire email is often one character away from the title company's real one.
How the score is built- Registration date
- When the web address was first registered, and who the registrar is, straight from the domain record.
- Mail setup
- Whether the domain can receive mail at all, and whether it has sender rules that stop other people sending as it.
- Site and archive history
- Whether the site answers today, what it says it is, and how far back an archived copy of it goes.
- Near-match names
- Whether the address is a one-character or one-word variant of a better-known name.
- Free and throwaway inboxes
- Whether a commercial quote arrived from a consumer provider or a disposable inbox.
Before the money leaves
5 steps a score cannot do for you
- 01Call the title or escrow officer on the number in the engagement letter and read the account back to them digit by digit.
- 02Treat any wire instruction that arrives or changes by email as fraud until that call.
- 03Compare the sending domain to the one on earlier correspondence, character by character.
- 04Send a small test wire first where the closing schedule allows it.
- 05Save the instruction email, the sending address, and the account details before funding.
A worked example
How one of these reads
The situation
Closing instructions arrive from what looks like the title company, two days before funding.
What the record says
The sending domain is a one-character variant of the title company's real domain, registered last month.
The reading
Critical band, with the lookalike domain and its registration date shown side by side.
Illustrative example built from the record types a check reads — registration dates, mail setup, site history, and near-match names. Not a real vendor.
Questions we get
4 questions, answered straight
How do I verify wire instructions before a closing?
Paste the sending email address into a check to see whether the domain is a near-match of the real one and when it was registered. Then call the closing officer on the number from the engagement letter and read the account back digit by digit. The call is the part that matters most.
The email looks exactly like the title company's. How would I know?
Usually by one character in the domain. That is precisely what the near-match reading looks for, and the check shows the registration date next to it.
Can a check confirm an escrow account or a licence?
No. Bank accounts, escrow licences, and state records are not part of a check. It reads the public record behind the email address and the web address.
Is a check useful once the money has gone?
Only as a record. Call your bank immediately and file with the FBI's IC3. A check tells you what the sending record showed, which helps the report, not the recovery.
What a score does not say
A score reads public records about an email address or a web address. It is an observation, not a guarantee, and it does not tell you whether a specific payment is safe. The manual steps still matter.
Built and run by a named person, not an anonymous site — who is behind this and how the score is built.
Building this into software your industry already uses? For platforms.
Paste the vendor's email address or website. About 10 seconds.
Run a free check