FBI Report: Online real estate fraud is on the rise to the tune of $275M

A new report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, based on 12,368 complaints, shows that cybercriminals stole more than $275 million through real estate-related fraud last year. That’s up from 2023 and 2024 but down significantly from 2022, when complaints peaked at 11,727 and $397 million in losses.

The report defines real estate fraud as “financial loss from a real estate investment or fraud that involves rental or timeshare property.”

One of the factors shaping fraud in 2025 was the rise of artificial intelligence, which made schemes more convincing and harder to detect.

“AI technology enables the creation of convincing synthetic content, such as social media profiles and personalized conversations, often in mass quantities,” according to the report. “People have manipulated video and audio similarly for decades, but the widespread availability of this developing technology makes it possible to create high-quality content.”

Cryptocurrency was another area that the report identified as rife with real estate-related fraud, with 715 incidents having a cryptocurrency angle for a loss of more than $25 million.

The report emphasized the importance of fast reporting to enable the FBI’s Recovery Asset Team (RAT) to initiate its Financial Fraud Kill Chain (FFKC) protocol. This process is designed to streamline communication between financial institutions and FBI field offices, freezing funds for victims as quickly as possible and helping to foil fraudulent transactions.

Case studies included in the report showed how the FFKC process works, citing a Missouri senior citizen who was preparing to close on a property and received a compromised email purportedly from their title company with wiring instructions for more than $1.3 million to a fraudulent account. The RAT partnered with domestic banking institutions and international financial crime entities to freeze the fraudulent recipient account.

In another complaint, individuals who were preparing to close on their home received an email “impersonating their legitimate attorneys.” They submitted a wire at their bank for more than $449,000 prior to uncovering the scheme. After the fraud was reported to their bank, the attorneys reached out to the recipient bank “with negative results,” according to the report, but intervention by the RAT and an FFKC request to freeze the fraudulent account at the recipient bank resulted in notification that “the full amount was still in the account and on hold.”

Email Christy Murdock