The sale proceeds left the intermediary and never reached the replacement property.
A contracting company sold a commercial building it had used for operations and parked the proceeds with a qualified intermediary for a tax-deferred exchange. An actor who had access to the owner's business email watched the closing thread, then sent wiring instructions that looked like they came from the intermediary. The funds, three hundred eighteen thousand dollars, moved to an account the small business owner did not control. The real intermediary had never issued that instruction.
The inbox was the control point. Formation records, the listing, and the closing notices all sat in the same mailbox that also talked to the intermediary. Once that mailbox was in someone else's hands, every later message about wiring looked internal. The owner authorized a transfer that matched the paper he thought he already knew.
Recovering a diverted exchange wire is a bank recall, a fraud report, and a separate fight with the intermediary over who accepted the last instruction. Those tracks do not share a clock. The exchange deadline does not pause while the recall sits. Missing the replacement property window can turn a tax deferral into a tax bill on money that is already gone.
A small business owner who runs a closing through one mailbox has put the largest check of the year behind a single login. Closing that inbox after the loss does not return the wire, and it does not show which other counterparties still treat mail from that address as final.
This could have been your business. It doesn't have to become your story. The RuleDraft Small Business Isolation Manual shows Small Business Owners how to separate their personal lives from their businesses before someone else connects the dots.