How to verify a Florida title company, and keep your closing money safe

The Florida Department of Financial Services. A person may not act as a title insurance agent until the Department has issued a valid license (Fla. Stat. § 626.8417(1)), after a 40-hour course or 12 months of supervised title work and the licensing examination (§ 626.8417(3)). An agency is licensed separately, and its application names its owners, officers and directors and the agent in full-time charge of each office (§ 626.8418).

Attorneys admitted in Florida are exempt from the licensing and appointment requirements when they act as attorneys (§ 626.8417(4)); an attorney-owned business that operates as a title agency rather than practising law must be licensed and appointed like any other (§ 626.8417(5)). The Department's own consumer page says the same: a closing through an attorney's title agency falls under the Department, a closing through the attorney's law practice under The Florida Bar (Florida DFS, Title insurance overview).

An agency also has to be appointed by the title insurer whose policies it issues, and the insurer certifies to the Department that the agency meets three requirements (Fla. Stat. § 626.8419(1)):

The surety bond has to stay in force for as long as the appointment does, with written proof to the insurer every year, and the insurer may not provide it itself (§ 626.8419(1)(d), (e)).

On the Department's Licensee Search, which is public and free. It searches by name or by Florida license number, and its filters include the license status, the license category and the appointing insurer. The Department's consumer page points to it for agents and agencies, and to the Office of Insurance Regulation's Active Company Search for the insurer itself, which can be searched by name and by authorized line of business, title insurance among them.

What to look for, in order:

1. The agency, by its license number. Ours is W806540, Bayit Title LLC. The status should read valid.
2. The agent in charge, by license number. Ours is W766033, Batsheva Lowenstein, who signs every page of this site.
3. The appointment. The agency should be appointed by the title insurer named on the commitment. Ours is First American Title Insurance Company, and the appointment is on the Department's record.
4. The insurer, on the Office of Insurance Regulation's search, authorized for title insurance in Florida.

One more check, for the person in the room. The closer who notarizes the deed holds a Florida notary commission, which the Department of State publishes on its notary search; our closers' commission numbers are on the team page.

Search by license number rather than by name. A name can be copied; a number on the Department's record cannot.

In trust, in a Florida bank. Every deposit, payoff, loan funding and purchase price a title agency receives for a closing is trust money, received in a fiduciary capacity and belonging to the people entitled to it (Fla. Stat. § 626.8473(2)). It must be placed immediately in a Florida institution insured by the FDIC or the NCUSIF, kept until its disbursement is properly authorized, used only under the instructions it was accepted on, and never subject to the agency's own debts (§ 626.8473(3), (4)). The agency keeps separate records of every receipt and disbursement (§ 626.8473(5)).

The Department's consumer page adds two rules a buyer and seller meet on a sale that falls through: escrow money cannot be put in an interest-bearing account without the written permission of its owner, and when a deal falls through “the money cannot be returned until the closing agent receives written approval from both parties; the seller and the buyer.” What happens when they do not agree is on the disputed deposit page.

One more protection sits behind the agency. A title insurer may issue an instrument, in a form approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation, under which it assumes liability for loss caused by the fraud, dishonesty or misappropriation of funds of its agents, or their failure to follow written closing instructions, on a transaction it is insuring (Fla. Stat. § 627.786(3)).

By email, and by patience. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes it this way: criminals compromise a real estate professional's email, watch the conversation until a closing is near, then send the buyer a spoofed message from a trusted party with last-minute changes to the wiring instructions (CFPB, Mortgage closing scams). The money goes to the criminal's account, and by the time anyone calls, it has moved on.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center counts it under business email compromise: a scam carried out by compromising email accounts and other channels, through social engineering or intrusion, to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds (FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report). Its figures:

From the same report: in August 2025 a couple closing on a home received an email impersonating their attorneys and wired over $449,000 to the account it named; the FBI's recovery team reached the recipient bank in time to freeze it. Most are not reached in time. The Bureau's 2024 announcement on the scam put the exposed loss worldwide between October 2013 and December 2023 at $55,499,915,582 (FBI IC3, PSA I-091124).

You call. Every step the CFPB and the FBI recommend comes down to that:

• Pick two people, early. Identify two trusted individuals, your closing agent and one other, to confirm the closing process and payment instructions, and write down each one's name and primary phone number before any money is discussed (CFPB).
• Never follow instructions in an email. Verify the account details by phone, “using the phone number you previously agreed to,” before sending money (CFPB). Use a second channel to verify any request to change account information (FBI IC3).
• Do not use the number in the email. A spoofed email carries a spoofed number. Use the one you wrote down at the start, or the one on the agency's own website.
• Treat a change as fraud. A title agency's trust account does not change in the middle of a file. Ours does not, and we say so to every client in writing at the start.
• Keep financial information out of email. “Email is never a secure way to send financial information” (CFPB).
• Confirm the wire landed. Call after you send it.

If a wire has gone to the wrong place, call your bank at once and ask for a recall, then file at ic3.gov; the FBI's recovery team works from the complaint, and the account in the example above was frozen because the complaint was filed the same day.

When money has gone to the wrong place and the bank will not recall it, when a party to the sale disputes who bears the loss, or when the instructions you were given came from a professional in the transaction and you need to know what that professional owed you. Each is a claim, and claims are for lawyers.