Wiring Closing Funds in Texas: How to Avoid Wire Fraud

By Cindy Dunnican | August 31, 2026

There's one moment in a Texas closing when more money moves at once than at almost any other point in your life, and it usually starts with an email. You get wire instructions. You log into your bank. You type in a routing number and an account number you've never seen before. Then you wait.

That moment is also the single most targeted point in the entire transaction. Criminals know when it happens, roughly how much is involved, and exactly who's in the email chain. According to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report, real estate fraud generated 12,368 complaints and $275.1 million in reported losses last year. Business email compromise — the scheme most often used to hijack a closing wire — ranked second across every cybercrime category tracked, with $3.04 billion in losses.

Here's how money actually moves in a Texas closing, how to send yours so it lands where it's supposed to, and what to do in the first few hours if something goes wrong.

What "Good Funds" Means in a Texas Closing

Texas doesn't let a title company move money on a promise. Under Texas Insurance Code §2651.202 and the Texas Department of Insurance's Procedural Rule P-27, a title company can't disburse from its trust account until good funds for the transaction have actually been received and deposited.

Good funds means money that's already there — not money that's on the way. In practice, that means:

• A wire transfer. Considered received once the title company's bank notifies them the funds have landed. This is the default for anything of size, and it's what most Rockwall County title companies will ask you for.
• A cashier's check. It qualifies under P-27, but many title companies verify cashier's checks with the issuing bank before funding, because counterfeits are common. That verification can cost you a day.
• Not a personal check. Not for the amount you'll owe at closing.

Texas is also a wet funding state, which means closing and funding happen close together — but they are not the same event. You sign, the lender funds, the title company disburses, and the deed gets recorded. Bank wire cutoffs generally fall between 4:00 and 4:30 p.m., so a late-afternoon closing can push disbursement — including the seller's proceeds — into the next business day.

This is why your title company will push you to wire, and why they want the funds a day early. Send your wire the morning before closing and you take an entire category of problems off the table. If you want the full sequence of what happens between contract and keys, I've walked through the buyer's closing timeline in Texas step by step.

How the Fraud Actually Works

It isn't a hack of your bank account. It's a hack of the conversation.

Somewhere in the chain — you, your agent, your lender, the title company, sometimes a transaction coordinator with a reused password — one email account gets compromised. The criminal doesn't act right away. They read. They learn the closing date, the file number, the approximate amount you'll bring, the names of everyone involved, and how each of them writes.

Then, a day or two before closing, you get an email. It looks like it came from the title company. Same signature block, same file number, sometimes appended to the same thread you've been reading all week. It says the wire instructions have changed — a new bank, an updated account, a note about a routing issue on their end. And it's urgent, because closing is Friday.

You wire. Within minutes the money is broken into smaller transfers and moved through mule accounts, often offshore the same day. The FBI reported that 86% of business email compromise losses in 2025 moved by wire or ACH, which is precisely why they're so hard to claw back.

The tell is almost always the same: a change. New instructions, a corrected account, a different bank, a last-minute update. That's the pattern, and it's the one thing you can train yourself to catch.

How to Send Your Closing Funds Safely

Six habits. None of them are clever. All of them work.

• Call to verify — every single time. Once you have wire instructions, call the title company and read the routing and account numbers back out loud. Use a number from your contract, your agent, or the company's website. Never the number in the email, and never a number in an attachment.
• Verify even when nothing changed. The first set of instructions can be fraudulent too, if the compromise happened early.
• Treat any change as fraud until proven otherwise. A title company's trust account doesn't move between contract and closing. If you get "updated" instructions, assume the worst and pick up the phone.
• Read the actual sender address, not the display name. Look for a swapped letter, an added hyphen, or a .co where there should be a .com.
• Put your name and the file or GF number in the wire reference. It helps the title company match your funds quickly, and it gives your bank something to work with if anything needs tracing.
• Confirm receipt by phone. Call the title company an hour or two after sending. Don't wait for an email confirmation, because a criminal sitting in the thread will happily send you one.

One more: don't email your own bank account numbers to anyone in the transaction. If someone needs them, give them verbally or through a secure portal.

If You've Already Sent the Money

The first hours decide everything. Work in this order, and don't stop to investigate first — reporting comes before understanding.

Speed matters more than anything else you'll do. In 2025 the FBI's Recovery Asset Team froze $679 million out of $1.16 billion in reported fraudulent transfers, roughly a 58% success rate, and that rate is driven almost entirely by how quickly victims report. After the first few days, the money is usually gone.

Sellers Wire Too — Just in the Other Direction

If you're selling, your exposure runs the opposite way. You're not sending funds; you're receiving them. The scheme against sellers is a criminal impersonating you to the title company, sending "updated" delivery instructions for your proceeds shortly before closing.

Protect that side the same way. Give your delivery instructions in person at signing or through a verified phone call, never by email. Then call the title company the day of funding to confirm where the proceeds went. If your closing runs late in the afternoon, expect the wire to land the next business day — that's normal, and it's covered in more detail in the seller's closing timeline for Texas.

Knowing your number before you get to the table helps here too. If your expected proceeds and the wire you receive don't match, you want to notice that within minutes, not weeks. That's part of why I go through what buyers actually pay at closing in Texas and the seller's net sheet with clients well before closing day — not so there are no surprises at the table, but so a surprise is immediately obvious.

The same logic applies earlier in the transaction, when you deliver your option fee and earnest money to the title company. Those amounts are smaller, but the delivery instructions deserve the same phone call.