A Silicon Valley executive had $400,000 stolen by cybercriminals while buying a home. Here’s her warning

After a yearlong search, Rana Robillard was elated to learn she’d beaten three other bidders for a house in the leafy California suburb of Orinda, just outside of San Francisco.

So when Robillard, chief people officer at software startup Tekion, received an email in late January from her mortgage broker with directions to wire a $398,359.58 down payment to a JPMorgan Chase

account, she wasted no time sending the money.

After all, the email appeared to be a response to one Robillard had sent her broker asking about final steps before the closing, which was rapidly approaching.

But on Jan. 30, the day after she’d sent the wire, Robillard got what looked like a duplicate request for the down payment, and it dawned on her that she had fallen for a scam — one that would throw her life into turmoil for the next six months. To her horror, instead of sending a down payment for her future home to the title company, as she believed she had done, Robillard had been tricked into sending her life savings to a criminal.

“That’s when I went into a full panic,” Robillard, 55, told CNBC, which verified the details of her story with the four banks involved.

What happened to Robillard, a 25-year veteran of tech companies including cybersecurity firm HackerOne, speaks to the increasingly sophisticated nature of cybercrime. Fraudsters are able to penetrate the email systems of mortgage brokers, real estate agents, lawyers or other advisors, waiting for the perfect moment to strike by sending emails or phone calls that appear to be from trusted parties.