Jonathan Delozier: What are you seeing this year in terms of new fraud patterns or the evolution of what criminals are throwing at the title ecosystem?
Tyler Adams: In 2025, the biggest shift we saw wasn’t necessarily brand new types of fraud, but more than that, criminals became much better at timing, context, and realism.
When deepfakes were being talked about in 2023 or even 2024, legitimate use in fraud tactics seemed very far away. But in 2025, things just changed. We have received attacks from fraudsters who successfully impersonate the voices of real people involved in a transaction, often using short audio clips from voicemail or LinkedIn.
It’s pretty crazy, and in several cases the voice itself sounded convincing enough to ensure the call passed what used to be considered a verification step.
At the same time, criminals are getting better at timing and context. They are involved in multiple steps: handling long, drawn-out scams, monitoring emails for weeks, and knowing exactly when to call or reinforce fraudulent messages during the transaction.
They use AI, but combine it with human patience, and that makes this feel more intense and different today than ever before.
JD: What success stories or close calls have you noticed this year where fraud was stopped or nearly became catastrophic?
SIGHT: We’ve seen millions of trades and if signals emerge early, we can consistently help prevent losses.
What’s interesting for us is that we get to look at two data sets: our core fraud prevention technology and all the inbound calls that come into our fraud recovery team. If you look at these two data sets, you can find some very interesting correlations between the two.
This year, we raised more than $100 million in funding to help victims recover. I think the number is now over $120 million. These are dollars that have been actively sent to fraudsters, and we’ve been working with our partners, including the US Secret Serviceto freeze accounts and try to recover money.
We had a $12 million loss due to brokering a large commercial real estate deal. After mediation determined who was owed the money, the law firm handling the money was tricked into sending the money to the wrong place.
By thinking all those steps, they finally finished and suddenly got scammed. We managed to get that money back, but it’s a cautionary tale that fraudsters were probably following the deal long before the mediation stage.
JD: You mentioned that individual homebuyers are still being hit hard. Why are these cases hit the hardest?
SIGHT: We always say that the smallest amounts are the most painful. Two reasons: Smaller amounts typically don’t get recovered because financial institutions don’t delay them, and for those buyers, it’s often all their savings. That down payment could represent years of effort. Those are really very sad situations.
JD: What verification practices prove most effective in stopping fraud before closing?
SIGHT: The most effective protections are not complicated, but they must be consistent. That means confirming wiring instructions using trusted contact information established early on (not whatever appears in an email at the end of the deal) and using fraud prevention tools, point blank.
We see much better results when companies use technology in addition to layered authentication: identity verification, device signaling, pattern tracking, and human awareness when something is wrong or wrong. These are becoming increasingly difficult to identify.
If a property was vacant and the owner had to sell it quickly and below market value, these should be warning signs that can cause you to delay a deal and realize that something might not be right. The companies that require electronic verification – regardless of the size of the deal or who is involved – are the ones that actually stop fraud.
JD: What’s stopping some companies from requiring electronic verification?
SIGHT: We have come a very long way. A few years ago, leaders worried they would lose employees if they added mandatory steps. Now people actually appreciate working for a company that protects them, because there is a lot of guilt and shame when someone accidentally sends a fraudulent telegram.
In some organizations that are very well run, they say it is mandatory and actions follow very quickly. Others say it is mandatory and operations are experiencing some delays. That’s where we try to help: we try to be that technology partner that’s not just a tool. We want to help you adopt the tool.
JD: Deepfakes are becoming increasingly accessible. How real is that threat today?
In response, Adams demonstrated a sobering example of evolving technology by sharing a presentation from a recent conference in which the face of CertifID co-founder and executive chairman Tom Cronkright was replaced with that of Adam Sandler and Dwayne Johnson.
SIGHT: That cost me ten dollars online to get a profile on that account and be able to develop that – and I did that in about an afternoon. That was a single image of Tom, a single image of Adam Sandler, and a single image of Dwayne Johnson.
I use that video to help customers understand how easy it is to customize and use these technologies. I mean, what we see there was nowhere near available a year ago.
Imagine how good this will be in three years, let alone twelve months. It’s insane. This isn’t fear mongering – it’s education. We need to be aware of what we are dealing with and what fraudsters will take advantage of.”
JD: What steps should companies take in 2025 to strengthen incident response, verification and training?
SIGHT: Don’t put off setting up your security processes, and once you have them in place, don’t deviate from them. Incidents will happen, so prepare for that reality. Companies need clear, written response plans and must put them into practice. Confusion and delays are the most expensive parts of fraud.
Employees need to see what modern fraud really looks like: messages that feel reasonable and familiar. Fraudsters don’t stop at a spoofed email. If they reach a deal, they will go in any direction.
Companies must consider fraud risk throughout the entire transaction: suppliers, partners, real estate agents. Security in real estate is a shared responsibility. If you don’t get your broker partners thinking about fraud the same way you think about it, or at least sharing in, “Hey, it’s our responsibility to protect the consumers involved,” then something is broken.
Our goal is to eventually bring all real estate agents into this fold. If we all work together, if we all have a similar message, that is our only chance to really combat fraud in the long term.
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