A few years back, a listener wrote to me to tell me about a problem they're facing.
Okay, check this out.
They went to buy a house, right?
And when you go to buy a house, there's like a little dance that everyone does.
Like, do you give them the money first, or do they give you the deed first and the keys?
Or do you do like, a quick swap at the same time?
What if it's a phony check or the deed is made up?
This is where escrow comes in.
Both the seller and buyer hand their things to a third party, someone that both sides trust and waits for everything to clear.
If the check clears and the deed is valid, then escrow says, okay, the deal is done, and gives the money to the seller and the keys to the buyer.
So this guy, a listener of mine, says he bought a house, and during this process, he gave $250,000 to the escrow company.
But then someone scammed the escrow company.
They posed as the seller and said, hey, could you just deposit the money into our bank account directly?
And escrow's like, oh, yeah, of course.
No problem.
We do this all the time.
Here you go.
And they deposited the $250,000 into the scammer's account instead of the actual seller.
But here's the crazy part.
Because the seller never got the money, escrow wouldn't give the keys to the buyer.