Fraud & scams,

In 2021, Alice, an 84-year-old pensioner, received a Facebook message from a friend of a friend recommending an investment purportedly with an overseas grant scheme. Alice contacted the scheme and decided to invest with it. She began transferring money to Australia, at first small amounts at infrequent intervals, but later larger sums at more frequently intervals. One day, she made two international payments at the same branch and was served by the same teller. She made all the payments in person at branches in her area. Each time, she completed a form declaring she had carried out checks and was sure the transfer was not a scam.

On one occasion, the teller asked the reason for the payment, and Alice said “for family reasons” – the answer she had been told to give by the scheme advisor. The teller considered this explanation at odds with the pattern of transactions and called the fraud team. Following a conversation with a fraud investigator, Alice came to realise she had been scammed. She had lost $114,000.

Alice's daughter-in-law complained the bank should have become suspicious about the transactions much sooner. Had it done so, she said, it could have prevented or minimised Alice’s loss. The bank disagreed, saying Alice completed a form confirming her intentions and authorised the payments. There was nothing, it said, to alert it to the fact she had become caught up in a scam.

November 2024