A title company in Naples wires $230,000 to what looks like the seller’s bank. The email matched. The signature looked right. The account number didnt, and nobody caught it until the real seller called a week later asking where their money went. That is business email compromise, and Fort Myers businesses keep walking into it.
The FBI ranks BEC as one of the costliest cybercrimes around, well ahead of ransomware in total dollars lost. US businesses lost over $3 billion to it in 2025. Real estate and title work are favorite targets because the dollar amounts are big and the timing is easy to guess. Closings run on a schedule, everyone expects wire instructions to fly around, and a single fake email dropped into the thread can move six figures before lunch.
How the scam actually works
There is no virus here, no obvious malware to scan for. The attacker gets into an email account or just spoofs an address that looks close enough, then sits and watches. They read your threads. They learn who pays the bills, who approves wires, how your vendors phrase their invoices. Patient ones lurk for weeks.
Then they strike at exactly the right moment. A vendor you actually use sends an invoice, and minutes later a near identical email arrives saying “we updated our bank, please use these new wire details.” Or a closing is two days out and you get fresh wire instructions that look like they came from the title company. The account number is the only thing thats changed, and its the one detail nobody double checks.
Payroll is another angle. An email that looks like its from an employee asks HR to redirect their direct deposit to a new account. Small change, easy to miss, and the paycheck is gone.
Why business email compromise targets Fort Myers businesses
Southwest Florida runs on real estate. Cape Coral, Bonita Springs, Naples, all of it. We have title companies, closing attorneys, property managers, and contractors moving large sums every single day. That is a rich hunting ground for wire fraud, and the scammers know it.
Snowbird season makes it worse. A lot of buyers and sellers are out of state, handling deals over email and phone, never meeting face to face. When the whole transaction happens remotely, a fake email blends right in. Nobody thinks twice about getting wire details by email because thats just how it has always been done down here.
Small offices get hit hardest. A two person title shop or a family run contracting business usually doesnt have an IT person checking headers or flagging weird sender domains. The scammers count on that.
Red flags and what to do about them
Most of these scams fall apart the second someone picks up the phone. The trick is building the habit before the bad email shows up, not after.
Watch for any email that changes payment details. A vendor suddenly has a new bank. Wire instructions get “corrected” at the last minute. The sender pushes urgency, says the deal will fall through if you dont wire today. Real people rarely rush you like that.
What Fort Myers businesses can do: call to confirm every wire change using a phone number you already have, never the one in the email. If a vendor or title company changes bank info, verify it by voice with a known contact before a dollar moves. This one habit stops the overwhelming majority of these losses.
Turn on multi factor authentication for every email account. Most BEC attacks start with a hacked inbox. MFA makes that a lot harder, even if a password leaks. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both have it built in, and its free.
Set up your email to flag outside senders. A simple “EXTERNAL” tag on messages from outside your company makes a spoofed coworker email stand out instantly. Look hard at the actual sending domain too. Scammers love swaps like henktek-closing.com instead of the real thing.
And if money already went out the door, move fast. The FBI runs something called the Financial Fraud Kill Chain, and they can sometimes claw back a wire if you report it within roughly 72 hours. Call your bank, then file with the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center right away. Speed is everything here.
Protect your Fort Myers business before the wire goes out
The frustrating part is how preventable most of this is. The losses ar’nt about fancy hacking. Theyre about a missing phone call and an email account with no MFA. Fix those two things and you have closed the door on most wire fraud.
At HenkTek we help small businesses across Fort Myers and Southwest Florida lock down their email, set up MFA the right way, and train staff to spot these scams before money leaves the building. We will audit your email security, flag the gaps, and put real protection in place.
Call us at (239) 234-2334 or reach out through our contact page for a free consultation. Better to spend an hour on this now than chase a wire you will probably never see again.