Three of Title Group of Tennessee's clients were being targeted at once. The fraudsters had swapped the “U” and the “O’ in the firm's domain, titlegroupoftn.com, and built email addresses mirroring employee names and signature blocks. One client actually tried to wire. 

"The only reason our client didn't lose half a million dollars is because the wire didn't go through," Managing Director and Attorney Michael Shope says. That was the moment Michael knew internal checks weren't enough.

Michael leads Title Group of Tennessee, a three-office firm headquartered in Knoxville with offices in Johnson City and Dickson. In nine years, he's watched the business grow from four employees to 20—and the fraud landscape grow right alongside it.

The moment everything changed

Every previous wire fraud attempt Michael had seen was internal, someone trying to trick his team into sending seller funds to the wrong account. He felt confident his processes could handle it. 

"I thought, we don't really need help with this process," he says. Then the fraudsters went after his clients instead of his team. "But when they started targeting our customers who didn't know any better, I knew we needed to change something."

The near-miss shook him on two levels. The first was the obvious one—a client nearly lost half a million dollars. The second was what it could have meant for the business. Michael didn't know if Title Group would be liable. And even if they weren't on the hook financially, the reputational damage from a client losing their life savings on a Title Group closing felt like something the firm couldn't survive. The fraud was entirely external, entirely outside his team's view, and unlike anything he had seen before.

CertifID was the name he knew. He made the call.

How Title Group uses CertifID today

Title Group now uses Payoff Protect on every deal for wiring instructions, without exception. Clients hear it up front from the start of the transaction: "This is the only way you'll ever receive wiring instructions from us."

CertifID Match gets layered in based on risk profile. Vacant properties, out-of-state sellers, or anything that feels off triggers the additional step. "If something seems fishy about one of the parties, we'll use the identification verification tool." The process is deliberate, consistent, and communicated to clients before the transaction ever gets close to a wire.

A cost of doing business, not an option

Michael frames CertifID like any core expense. "That [was] a new cost to our business that we didn't have before. But the threat of having a customer lose their life savings became a cost that I felt was not only reasonable but necessary for us to absorb as a cost of doing business in this world."

His advice to peers still weighing the decision gets to the heart of what title companies owe their clients: "At the end of the day, you need to be able to lay your head down and go to sleep knowing you've done everything you can to protect your clients from what could be the worst day of their lives. You need to try just as hard to protect your client from losing money to wire fraud as you do to clear the title to their home before you close on it. And so it's equally important."

That last line says it plainly. Clearing title and protecting against wire fraud aren't separate responsibilities. They're equal ones.

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