A woman who was scammed for $500,000 AUD (£260,000) after a simple Google search has spoken out on the red flags she missed.
Australia native Jo O’Brien said she was 'heartbroken' after her divorce settlement worth half a million dollars disappeared before her very eyes as it was stolen out of her investment account.
Jo sent her bank account details through a comparison website in May 2022, which was later revealed to be fake, she explained:
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“I Googled ‘the best fixed-term investment rates’ and it came up as one of the first (links),
“It turned out it was a landing board created by the scammers I think,” she told news.com.au.
The following day, the mother-of-two got three calls from men who said that they were from different financial service companies, including AMP (Australian Mutual Provident Society), while using the names of real employees and offering her 'better' rates.
She checked the names they gave on the official website, with numbers on her phone even popping up as being based in Sydney.
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It was over the next couple of weeks that Jo's life would be turned upside down.
The scammers began to send fake emails and forms, explaining that she would need to fill it in before she was passed onto the legal department, which Jo said she saw 'no flags' in as she wasn't rushed.
However, she realised looking back that small details like incorrect punctuation could have given it away, but her bookkeeper even looked it over at the time, and green-lit the process.
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She sent her personal details over and was sent the details of a NAB (National Australia Bank) account which was apparently under her name and linked to her local branch in Melbourne.
However, the money she transferred was actually sent to a company's bank account before being sent offshore.
“(They) said ‘here’s the account number when you’re ready to make the first transfer.’
“It wasn’t rushed, it didn’t feel dodgy or anything."
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She also noted that the bank was down the road from her home, so nothing about it felt fishy.
However, she did ask about why she was sent a NAB account instead of a AMP account, and was told by the scammer that they would use these accounts sometimes in Melbourne and Sydney.
Before going ahead with it, she instructed her bank, Commonwealth Bank, to increase her daily withdrawal limit from $20,000 (£10,400) to $100,000 (£52,000), even being read a scam disclaimer in the process.
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But then, in June 2022, she made the fateful phone call after receiving a message from her bank to call them as soon as possible.
They had suspected that she may have fallen victim to a scam, and Jo explained in detail how she dealt with the news.
“I (was driving and) pulled into a side street and I was shaking and bawling my eyes out. I couldn’t speak,” she recounted.
“It was basically nearly all the money I had.
“I feel let down by my bank because they allowed $500,000 – five separate transactions over two weeks – into an account (with the company’s name).”
But she wasn't the only one, as eight other people were tricked into paying a total of near $1.7 million (£885,000) into the same NAB account for the scam.
Jo then took matters into her own hands, hunting down the man that scammed her and threatening to expose the man.
The man ended up proposing a scheme to get her money back from one of the accounts, but she refused, insisting that she wanted to bring justice to all the Australians that have been scammed in the past.
“He said Australia is a big target and (scammers) are making millions of dollars,” she revealed.
Jo was also disappointed with the way the case was handled by authorities.
So far, nobody has been prosecuted.
Joshua Nair