The industry needs to have an urgent discussion on wire fraud

Twenty days after selling his house, Rich Hopen received an alert from his bank about the monthly mortgage payment for the house he no longer owned.

Confused, Hopen called his mortgage lender to try and understand what happened – only to learn that the lender had never received his mortgage payoff. Instead, his $239,000 had been stolen by a criminal committing wire fraud. And if it could happen to Hopen, a Redfin real estate agent himself, it could happen to anyone.