Evan Amadio is an escrow wire coordinator for the FNTG New York Agency Division. On March 30, 2021, he was opening a new order in the escrow production system and creating wire instructions for the lender to send payoff funds in connection with the closing of a multi-million dollar loan.

During this new order process, at 10:35 a.m., Evan received four commercial loan payoff letters from an employee at the title agency closing the transaction.

The payoff amounts Evan was setting up to send out via wire transfer were:

At 11:08 a.m., Evan received the loan payoff letters again. However, this time the payoff letters were ostensibly from the borrower's legal counsel. Evan was concerned because one of the payoff letters from the borrower's legal counsel contained bank wire information with an incorrect ABA routing number. The first number should have been a "0," but instead was a "1."

During Evan's review of the latest payoff letter he noticed the bank wire instructions were completely different than the bank wire information reflected on the first payoff he received. He reviewed the other three payoff letters, they also contained different bank wire information. The funds for all four payoffs were being directed to two new bank accounts at a totally different bank. This heightened his suspicion of the sender of the email.

Evan took the payoffs to his teammates, Pat Burke and Patrick Quimby, along with the email message from the borrower's counsel. Together they confirmed the sender's email was fraudulent and sent from a spoofed email address, not the legal counsel's real email address. The spoofed account was created from a cleaning company's domain, not from a law firm's domain.

The three teammates stopped the closing. They notified the title agent of Evan's discovery. Together, they confirmed all wire information with the payoff lenders, and the closing was rescheduled. His actions saved the Company from a tremendous loss and as a result, he has received a $1,500 reward, along with a letter of recognition from the Company.