How to verify wire instructions before a closing

The phone callback that confirms where closing money goes, made before anyone sends a wire.

Published by Heirloom Acquisitions LLC. Drafted with AI help. Sources checked and approved by Heirloom Acquisitions on September 27, 2026.

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Closing money moves by wire, and the Federal Reserve Board describes a transfer over the Fedwire Funds Service as final and irrevocable once processed, so any check has to happen before the money leaves. The check is a phone call to the closing agent at a number the buyer found independently, before any wire instructions arrived, with the agent reading the account details from its own file. The closing agent is whoever holds and sends the money at closing: a title company, an escrow agent or a closing attorney.

A forwarded email at a house closing

On February 23, 2016, the sellers' real estate agent in a Kansas house sale received wiring instructions that a criminal had altered, sent from an address posing as the title company, and tried to forward them to the buyer. Her forward went to a look-alike of the buyer's email address. Six minutes later the buyer received the altered instructions in an email that came from the agent's real address, which she denied sending. The buyer had his bank wire $196,622.67 to an account the criminal controlled, and the court's summary judgment order records that the money was never recovered.

The buyer sued the agent and her brokerage. At the April 2018 jury trial the agent conceded that she had not confirmed the instructions were correct, despite oddities such as an incomplete bank address outside the area. The buyer testified that she told him by phone to wire the money before closing; the defense pointed to phone records that showed no call to her after the instructions arrived. The jury put 85 percent of the fault on her and 15 percent on the buyer, whom the defense called an experienced real estate investor, and the court entered judgment of $167,129.27 against the agent and her brokerage. On June 25, 2018 the federal court in Kansas denied their motion to overturn the verdict.

Money for a small business purchase moves the same way when the deal closes through an escrow agent or an attorney's trust account, so the callback below applies there too.

The phone number, found before it is needed

On the day the contract is signed, the buyer gets the closing agent's main number from somewhere outside the email thread:

  • The company's website, reached by typing its address into the browser.
  • The buyer's own attorney.
  • A card or letter handed over in person.

The number goes in the deadline register with the date and where it came from. The Federal Trade Commission's mortgage shopping guidance gives the same advice for a suspicious message: reach the lender or agent at a number or email address known to be real.

The callback, step by step

The call happens a few business days before closing, and again on closing day if anything about the instructions has changed.

  1. Call the number in the register. Skip any number that came in the email with the instructions, and any number a caller gives out.
  2. Ask for the person handling the file, by name.
  3. Ask them to read the bank name, the routing number and the account number from their own file, and check each digit against the instructions received.
  4. Confirm the amount and the name on the receiving account.
  5. Write down who answered, the time and the number called, in the register's Done column.
  6. Send the wire only after every item matches.
  7. If anything differs, stop and call the attorney before sending anything.

This guide describes a process. What a particular contract means, and what it allows, is for the attorney on that deal to say.

When the account changes

An email, text or call that changes the account, the bank or the payment method fits the pattern the Federal Trade Commission describes: a message posing as a loan officer or real estate professional, announcing a last-minute change and asking for the closing money to go to a different account. Whatever reason the message gives (an audit, a new bank, a problem with the old account), the change waits for a callback to the number in the register. A message that asks for the wire today, before any call, fits the same pattern.

What a name and a test wire prove

Wire instructions carry both a name and an account number, and the bank at the receiving end does not have to compare them. Under section 4A-207 of the Uniform Commercial Code, the uniform law on wire transfers that each state enacts, the beneficiary's bank (the bank that holds the destination account) may pay whoever holds the number, as long as it does not know the name and number belong to different people.

A small test amount sent first shows only that the account exists and accepts wires. It says nothing about who controls the account, so the callback still happens.

Timing on closing day

The Federal Reserve Board's Fedwire page puts the service's business day at 9:00 p.m. Eastern the evening before through 7:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday outside holidays, with 6:45 p.m. Eastern as the deadline for transfers on behalf of a bank's customers. The Board announced on October 9, 2025 that Fedwire will add Sundays and weekday holidays, no earlier than 2028. The buyer's bank sets an earlier cutoff for wire requests.

  1. Ask the bank, well before closing, what time it needs the wire request on closing day and what it needs to send it.
  2. Send the funding wire early on closing day, after the callback.
  3. Call the closing agent at the register number to confirm the money arrived, and write the time in the register.

When the money went to the wrong account

The first call goes to the sending bank's fraud department, to ask for a recall of the wire; the full first hour, in order, is on Threatbender's page for the first hour after a wire goes to the wrong account.

The seller's side of the wire

The seller's proceeds and any payoff of the seller's loan leave by wire too. The seller gives payout instructions to the closing agent on a call the seller places to the agent's known number, and confirms them again before closing.

Sources

Talk through a deal under contract

A 30-minute call about the dates in a purchase contract or a finding from diligence. Bring the deadline register and the contract.

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