Buying a house is meant to be cause for celebration, but for some it’s ending in devastation. Mortgage deposit scams are growing in Australia, and one couple, who lost 250-thousand dollars, want to warn others.
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00:00Sarah and Lane found their dream home on the Gold Coast, but it wasn't long before it was
00:08taken from them.
00:09The day before settlement was literally when we found out that we'd been pretty much scammed
00:17all of our money.
00:19After successfully bidding for the property, the couple received an email from who they
00:23thought was their conveyancer.
00:25They had the right funds deposit that we needed.
00:29There was no difference to recognise that other than the .au on the end of that email
00:34that I wasn't talking to the real person.
00:37So they went to an ANZ bank branch to transfer more than $250,000.
00:42I said well I'm here's the email and they literally picked up my phone, zoomed in on
00:46the account details on that email, plugged it into their system, did the transfer and
00:51we were none the wiser that anything was wrong.
00:53The money had been transferred to a scam account.
00:57The couple were victims of what's called a spear phishing attack.
01:00These sort of highly targeted attacks I think are much more difficult to pick up and they
01:05play to human behaviour which is a level of comfort with the kind of names and brands
01:09that you're dealing with and we're much more likely unfortunately to fall victim to these.
01:13According to the ACCC, Australians lost more than $16 million in payment redirection scams
01:20in 2023.
01:22The ABC understands the money was not sent overseas but into an Australian account.
01:28The police investigation has uncovered possible suspects including a university student in
01:33Melbourne and the case has been referred to Victoria Police.
01:37ANZ was only able to recover $80,000.
01:41The bank says it's unable to comment on individual customers.
01:45The reality is electronic banking is scary now and we have no control over it.
01:51Their devastation, a warning for others.