You sent a wire. The instructions looked legitimate. The email came from someone you had been corresponding with for weeks, sometimes months. The amount was consistent with what you were expecting to send for a real estate closing, a vendor payment, an attorney trust transfer, or an investment commitment.
Then the real recipient called and asked where the money was. Your bank says the funds have already been released downstream and they cannot get them back.
The sums involved are typically in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is the moment we step in.
If the wire just went out, the clock is everything. A SWIFT recall has a roughly 24-72 hour window before the receiving bank releases the funds downstream, so call your bank's wire-recall desk now, then file an FBI IC3 complaint at ic3.gov and ask for the Recovery Asset Team freeze (it can freeze a domestic wire within hours when reached in time).
Do that first; then call us to preserve the email-impersonation evidence before the criminal infrastructure rotates. We are honest that recovery odds drop fast, but the forensic record holds value for insurance and civil claims even when the funds do not come back.
Quinnlan Varcoe, Founder and CEO, oversees every wire transfer fraud investigation and reviews every case before findings leave the practice. The practitioner team executes the technical work.
Engagements are confidential, NDA-protected, and structured to begin within 24 to 48 hours of the consultation because wire-recall windows are short.
Pricing is hourly at $400 per hour, the same standardized rate every SleuthX engagement bills at including expert witness, or a done-for-you device package from $3,000, each including the $995 lifetime license.
Optional fixed-fee tracks for well-bounded scope and sliding-scale pricing for individuals who lost retirement or home-purchase funds are available on the first call.
What this is
A forensic wire fraud recovery engagement produces the documented evidentiary record that the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center Recovery Asset Team, your bank's fraud department, the receiving bank, your cyber and crime insurance carrier, civil counsel, and where applicable, federal prosecutors and plaintiff trial counsel can act on.
The investigation traces how the fraudulent wire instructions reached you (mailbox compromise of a counterparty, lookalike-domain spoofing, account-takeover at a title company or real estate brokerage, social-engineering phone follow-up), reconstructs the timeline of unauthorized email access where it occurred, identifies any ongoing criminal access to your accounts or the counterparty's accounts, and produces a written report structured for the specific recovery pathways that apply in your case.
We do not chase money through correspondent banking; we produce the case file that the institutions with that authority use to chase it.
This page is for people who have already been hit by wire fraud. If you are researching the criminal statute, the federal sentencing guidelines, or the elements of 18 U.S.C. 1343 for a law-school assignment or a news article, this is not the right page. We are a forensic investigation firm, not a legal-research service, and we will redirect you to the appropriate resources.
Who this is for
- Real estate buyers and sellers who lost a closing wire to a fraudulent account after compromise of the title company, escrow agent, or one party's email infrastructure.
- Small and mid-sized business operators who sent a wire on the basis of fraudulent instructions inserted into an email thread by a criminal who had taken over an executive or vendor inbox (business email compromise / BEC).
- High-net-worth individuals and family-office principals whose investment, philanthropic, or trust-related wire was redirected by an impersonation pretext targeting an advisor, attorney, or accountant in the chain.
- Attorneys representing wire-fraud victims in civil suits against title companies, real estate brokerages, escrow agents, originating banks, or receiving banks who need a forensic partner producing FRE 901 / 902(13) / 902(14) compliant electronic evidence.
- Insurance brokers and claims professionals coordinating cyber and crime policy claims where the carrier requires a forensic report to substantiate the social-engineering vector and the absence of policyholder fault.
How the engagement works
- Free confidential consultation by phone or video. NDA-protected. 30 to 60 minutes. Direct conversation with Quinn, the founder and CEO who oversees every engagement. We hear the timeline, identify the recovery pathways still open (SWIFT recall, IC3 RAT freeze, insurance, civil), and tell you whether forensic investigation will materially help or whether you are better served by going straight to your bank and counsel.
- Scoped engagement with a written proposal and pricing. Choose the $995 self-serve tool or a done-for-you device package from $3,000 (each including the $995 license); a refundable retainer covers intake, evidence preservation, and the first round of email-header and account-access forensics. $400/hour flat for anything beyond a package.
- Forensic acquisition of relevant artifacts. Email accounts on both sides of the impersonation chain (with consent of the counterparty where applicable), email server logs, mail-rule and forwarding-rule history, mobile devices that received SMS or call confirmations of the fraudulent instructions, banking and brokerage account exports, wire-confirmation pages, and the original closing or contract documentation.
- Investigation and reconstruction. Source of compromise, timeline of unauthorized inbox access, lookalike-domain analysis, spoofing-versus-account-takeover determination, identification of any persistent criminal access (mail rules hiding criminal activity from the legitimate user, OAuth tokens granting silent inbox access), and where applicable, payment-rail tracing through correspondent banking to identify off-ramp jurisdictions for law-enforcement seizure pursuit.
- Written report to court-admissible standards, structured for the specific pathways that apply in your case: IC3 Recovery Asset Team, FBI Cyber Division referral, cyber insurance claim under Travelers / AIG / Beazley / Coalition / Resilience policy forms, UCC Article 4A claim against the receiving bank, civil action against negligent counterparties, and where applicable, plaintiff trial counsel for wire-fraud civil litigation.
- Coordination with bank fraud teams (originating and receiving), the IC3 Recovery Asset Team, FBI Cyber Division, USPIS, your insurance carrier, civil counsel, and where applicable, federal prosecutors. We do not replace these institutions; we produce the case file that makes their work materially more tractable.
How we work a wire-fraud case
- Written scope before any work. You see a written scope covering deliverables, timeline, and price, and you approve it before we begin. You are never billed for work you did not authorize.
- We commit to findings, not outcomes. We tell you up front what the evidence can and cannot establish. Recovery, attribution, and prosecution are decided by banks, platforms, insurers, and courts. We produce the record they act on, and we put that distinction in writing.
- Every case is investigated, not just scanned. A credentialed examiner reviews every case before findings leave the practice. You get a documented investigation to court-admissible standards, not a single automated scan and a one-line answer.
- We will tell you if you do not need us. If a free or simpler step would resolve your situation, whether a police report, an IC3 filing, or a platform's own recovery flow, we point you there first.
- We build the case file; the institutions chase the money. Private forensic firms have no subpoena power or correspondent-banking authority. Wire recall, IC3 Recovery Asset Team freezes, insurance, and asset seizure are run by banks, the FBI, and licensed counsel. We produce the evidentiary record that makes their work tractable, and we charge for that work whether or not the funds come back.
Real estate closing wire fraud is the highest-volume vector
The FBI IC3 2023 report logged over $446 million in real estate wire fraud losses across more than 9,500 victims, with losses concentrated in markets where home prices and closing-wire amounts are highest. Florida, California, Texas, New York, and the Northeast corridor account for a disproportionate share of total losses; Naples, Marco Island, and the broader SW Florida high-end retiree market sit inside one of the most concentrated targeting zones in the country. The forensic methodology for real estate wire fraud is consistent across cases (where did the email compromise originate, how were the fraudulent instructions inserted, what banking persistence remains), and a Florida-based forensic investigator who lives in the targeting environment, knows the FL state and federal pathways, and works alongside Florida real estate counsel produces materially better case outcomes than a remote firm chasing a one-off engagement.
