Dream home turns into nightmare for scam victims
A Queensland couple who thought they had snapped up the home of their dreams have been left devastated after they lost almost $40,000 to a “cunning” email scammer instead.
When Mitch Wilson and Penny Davies received an email from what appeared to be their real estate agent’s email address, they believed they were following their agent’s advice to then transfer the deposit for their house into a bank account.
“It plays over and over in my head all of the time,” Ms Davies said.
“We got an email from the real estate agent we had been dealing with, from their email account, saying in light of the contract please pay money to this account,” Mr Wilson told 9News.
The couple lost nearly $40,000 after receiving the fraudulent email (left), realising their costly mistake while messaging the actual real estate agent (right). Images: 9News
After transferring the $39,000 sum, they thought nothing of it until the agent contacted them several days later asking where the funds were.
“We went back and forth, we exchanged screenshots and emails from their side and ours, and what was obvious is the money didn’t go where it was supposed to go which was their account,” Mr Wilson said.
“(It) ended up in some fraudster‘s account and then offshore to a crypto account.”
But, the couple aren’t the only victims of this kind of scam, which police refer to as an email compromise scam. The scammers infiltrate an email account and use it to send emails to victims - making it difficult to identify that they are being scammed.
Constance Hall, a mummy blogger, told news.com.au she felt “stupid” after losing thousands of dollars to the scam after she transferred money via a link sent from the real estate agency that managed the rental property she believed she was paying a deposit for.
When she contacted the bank, she was told that the chance of recovering the funds was minimal as she had authorised the transaction, and that she should report it to the police.
In the end, only $7.57 was recovered.
“To have it all stolen in an instant … felt unbelievably unfair,” she said.
Ian Wells, of Queensland Police’s Cyber Crime Group, told 9News: “These people with these skills, they‘re very cunning, they’re very calculated.”
Police are advising home buyers to contact the business before paying invoices online to confirm bank account numbers, as the hackers change the bank accounts in invoices sent by business owners before forwarding the altered invoices to unsuspecting customers.
Victims are also urged to contact their bank as soon as possible to report the fraudulent transaction.
As for businesses impacted by the scams, the Australian Cyber Security Centre advises that they report the incident at https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/report, alert other employees and clients, and report the breach to their email service provider.
Image: 9News