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Technically yes, wire instructions can be faxed, but title companies now warn buyers to treat any received wire instructions as suspect until confirmed by phone. The wire-fraud pattern is real and simple: a fraudster spoofs the title company's message and swaps in their own account.
This is general information, not legal advice.
Closing day is when the most money you will ever move changes hands, and everyone involved knows the timing. The classic scam works like this: someone compromises an email account in the transaction (agent, lender, or title), watches for closing dates, then sends "updated" wire instructions to the buyer. The buyer wires the down payment to the fraudster's account, and the money is usually gone before anyone notices. Because fax numbers are also easy to spoof and faxes are simple to forge, a faxed set of instructions deserves the same suspicion as an emailed one. It is the message you cannot trust, not the channel.
| Step | What to do | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Verify by phone | Call the title company at a number you already have (not one printed on the instructions) | The one check fraudsters cannot fake: a voice you know confirming the account |
| Resist last-minute changes | Reject any "updated" instructions unless you initiated the change | Almost all closing scams arrive as urgent last-minute revisions |
| Watch for pressure | Pause if anything feels rushed, especially within a day of closing | Scammers rely on urgency to stop you from verifying |
| Wire in person when possible | Send the wire from your bank branch with the instructions in hand | A teller can sanity-check details and catch typos that reroute funds |
Fax is marginally harder to intercept mid-route than an email sitting in a hacked inbox, but it is not harder to forge. An attacker who can spoof a fax header can send you a perfect-looking "title company" fax with their account numbers. Meanwhile, faxing strips away the one advantage email offers: headers and account trails that a security team can investigate later. Some title companies have stopped sending instructions at all and now hand them out in person at closing or require you to pick them up from a secure portal. That shift happened precisely because every remote channel can be faked.
Never wire money based only on instructions you received unsolicited, by any channel: email, fax, text, or phone call. One more habit worth building: save the title company's main office number and your escrow officer's direct number in your phone at the start of the transaction, before any instructions arrive. That way, when the "updated instructions" land the day before closing, the verification call is one tap away and you are not hunting for a number while feeling the pressure. Never call the phone number printed on the instructions themselves to "verify" them, since the instructions and the number may come from the same fraudster. Never treat a slight change (one digit different in the account number, a new routing number) as a harmless correction: that is exactly what fraud looks like. And never assume you can recover a mistaken wire the way you can stop a check; once a wire leaves, recovery is a long shot.
LetterAgent can send your fax if the recipient's number is in the US or Canada. You describe the fax to your AI assistant, get a per-fax quote with the page count verified, approve the exact total, and pay once through Stripe. The fax feature is currently in testing, so it is not promised to be available for any particular send, and faxes are outbound only. Note the caution above applies regardless of who sends the fax: nothing about the sending method makes received wire instructions safe to follow without a callback.
Ready to fax it? Fax with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is sent.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
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