Harriet Spring remembers the first phone call, in November.
The man with the “posh British accent” on the other end introduced himself as “from ING” and asked if she was interested in good rates on fixed-term deposits.
“Nothing crazy, nothing too out of the ordinary,” Mrs Spring said.
“So, I didn’t think, ‘that sounds too good to be true’.”
In fact, it was perfect timing for the Canberra architect — an existing ING customer — who’d been driving to and from the NSW South Coast each weekend for months to prepare her 95-year-old mother’s house for sale.
Her mother had moved into an aged care facility after a series of strokes left her “unable to walk or talk”.
“It was the end of a very hard year, and this guy just made it so easy,” Mrs Spring said.
After months of phone calls and correspondence that she said appeared legitimate, she handed over $1.6 million — her mother’s life savings — to scammers.
The real ING bank was not involved in any part of the process.
“It didn’t sound dodgy in any way, you know, all of the emails had the branding of ING … they completely fooled me,” Mrs Spring said.
“I just was so relieved that I was finally able to put it all behind us, and we could just settle down and focus on Mum.”
The man who she’d been talking to told her the money would need to be transferred into a “holding account with Westpac, for legal reasons”, a detail she said was queried by her mother’s bank.
“I’ve never done a fixed-term deposit before so I didn’t know that was an unusual circumstance [but] a reasonable banker with reasonable knowledge should have known [it was suspicious],” Mrs Spring said.
Mrs Spring said she also asked her mother’s bank to match ING’s rate, which they declined, but did tell her, “actually, ING aren’t offering that rate”.
“My mother’s bank didn’t say ‘do you want to think about [the money transfer]? It could be a scam’,” she said.
“They just said, ‘we can’t match it’.”
Mrs Spring said her money was transferred to a Westpac account and on to almost a dozen other Australian banks before becoming untraceable, and her subsequent appeals for information have been denied “for privacy reasons”.
In response to questions from the ABC, Westpac said it was unable to comment on individual cases but said stopping scams was one of its “biggest priorities”.
“When customers of other banks transfer money to scammers, we work hard to recover funds on their behalf where possible,” a Westpac spokesperson said.
Earlier this month, Westpac announced it was “stepping up its fight against scammers” with Westpac Verify, a new security feature aiming to help customers identify scam activity before making a payment.
Now, customers adding a new payee using a BSB and account number are prompted to review those details if a potential account name mismatch is identified, or if Westpac hasn’t made a payment to that account before.
Westpac said it has saved customers more than $120 million in scam losses in the first half of this financial year, “representing a 32 per cent reduction compared with the same period last year”.
It’s also introduced measures like “call-spoofing measures”, to prevent scammers from impersonating the bank’s phone numbers, as well as inbound payment detection, “to check for potential scam indicators, with funds held where a scam is detected”.
Scams too complex, too sophisticated for consumer to pick up: expert
Mrs Spring’s story is not uncommon.
Last year, Australians lost $2.7 billion to scammers, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
It’s less than the record $3.1 billion lost in 2022 but almost a billion dollars higher than two years earlier.
Consumer Action Law Centre chief executive Stephanie Tonkin said those kinds of stories were all too common.
“Our lawyers are hearing every day, reports of people being tricked with highly complicated, sophisticated scams,” she said.
Just last month, ASIC released an alert warning people about “sophisticated bond and term deposit scams”.
“ASIC encourages consumers to be alert to investment scams that set up bank accounts in the consumer’s name or request funds be transferred to a third-party account that is not in the name of the financial services business or held by the bank providing the service,” their alert read.
“These scammers are no longer people in their basement,” Ms Tonkin said.
“They’re people working for multinational companies with resources and the ability to use technology like [artificial intelligence] AI to trick people out of their money.
“It’s near impossible to detect a scam in many cases, and therefore it’s near impossible to protect yourself.”
Calls for banks to reimburse funds
Mrs Spring and Ms Tonkin have joined growing calls for Australian banks to reimburse customers defrauded by third parties.
That’s the approach in the UK, where banks have been encouraged to sign up to a voluntary code for reimbursement since 2019.
It will be mandatory from October.
About four years ago, British bank TSB started reimbursing almost all customers who fell victim to scams, including clients who were tricked into making payments.
It’s seen a reduction in fraud, despite refunding 97 per cent of fraud claims since the scheme began.
“You should be ensured that your money is kept safe and, if it’s not, then you should be reimbursed,” Ms Tonkin said.
“We [the consumers] simply don’t have information and access to information like unusual transactions, like the account details of mule accounts, we don’t have the information to be able to protect ourselves.”
The federal Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment Andrew Leigh, agreed scams were getting increasingly sophisticated.
He said while the government was doing what it could, including blocking dodgy texts and working with mobile phone carriers and the banks, people needed to remain “on guard”.
“You just have to be on your guard for anyone who you don’t know, suggesting that you transfer money out of the account,” Dr Leigh said.
“If you’re not sure about a call that’s coming through, hang up and phone through to the bank number that’s on their website.
“Don’t click those links that come through in text messages that are unsolicited or emails that are unexpected.”
Last year, the federal government set up the National Anti-Scam Centre to coordinate intelligence about scams.
It has also promised awareness campaigns to help boost financial literacy and has foreshadowed mandatory industry codes of practice, with a consultation paper released on the matter late last year.
Dr Leigh said the government has also worked with banks to roll out confirmation of payee technology, which he said is expected to be in place at every bank by the end of next year.
“That essentially means that if you pull up an account and a BSB, then it will confirm the name that is in that account,” he said.
The government expects that technology will lead to a 10 to 15 per cent drop in authorised push-payment scams, and Dr Leigh isn’t convinced mandatory reimbursement will help.
“We need the obligation to be at the party that is really doing the wrong thing,” he said.
As for Mrs Spring, the experience has made her wary of answering her phone, unless she knows the caller.
“I can’t trust anything anymore,” she said.
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