Yahoo Finance Tiny detail costs Aussie homebuyer $813,000: 'Be vigilant'
Aussies have been warned to be vigilant when sending large sums of money to avoid being scammed.
A South Australian woman has been saved from utter financial ruin after being caught up in a horrific scam while trying to buy a house. Cybercriminals copied the email address of a legitimate conveyancer's account but changed just one letter.
They sent the woman an invoice for $813,000 and she handed over the huge sum of cash thinking she was about to get the keys to a property. But the money quickly moved from the scammer's accounts into overseas cryptocurrency.
Two days after she had transferred the money, she realised what had happened.
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She contacted her bank and filed a police report through ReportCyber and authorities jumped on the case.
The AFP-led Joint Policing Cybercrime Coordination Centre (JPC3) worked with state and territory police, as well as several financial institutions, to track down the funds.
In a stunning win, they managed to track down $505,000 of the victim's money after freezing the scammer's bank account.
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This was incredibly lucky as scam money is usually quickly sent to several other accounts across the country and the globe to evade authorities.
Police discovered that close to $300,000 of the money had already been transferred into cryptocurrency. They contacted crypto exchange platform Binance to freeze the account and were able to extract $272,000.
After months of work, authorities were able to return $777,000 of the $813,000 the Aussie woman had lost in the scam, which is more than 95 per cent of the money.
Aussies need to be vigilant when sending big sums of money
AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Darryl Parrish said these types of scams were incredibly complex.
"Cybercriminals commonly target businesses and individuals making significant payments, like property transactions, in an attempt to divert victim's funds to a fraudulent account," he said.
"In many cases, cybercriminals gain access to a business' email account, altering banking details and sending the new details to clients who unknowingly transfer funds to criminals.
"Businesses can prevent cybercriminals from accessing their online accounts by setting up multi-factor authentication (MFA) to add an extra layer of security, making it harder for criminals to get in.
"In other cases, like this one, the criminal had created a fake email address that looked like the legitimate business email. It is crucial for people to double-check emails, particularly email addresses and banking details, to avoid becoming victims of [Business Email Compromise] BEC scams."
AFP Senior Cybercrime Analyst Carolyne Burge added that you should always double or even triple-check before sending large amounts of money.
"If you receive an email asking to make payments to a new bank account, we strongly recommend that you contact the person who you deal with on a regular basis via a known contact number," she said.
"If you don't have a known contact number, always do a Google search and look for the office number and make inquiries that way. Do not contact the phone number that is within the email, as it's highly likely compromised."
Binance Investigations Specialist Robert Thomson said it was easy to recover the funds because of the nature of public blockchains, but the platform "strongly urges all users to remain vigilant".
The Australian Cyber Security Centre revealed that self-reported BEC losses were around $80 million in 2022-23 and the average loss per person was around $39,000.
Scamwatch has noted that while the number of reports for payment redirection scams fell 28 per cent last year, the amount lost increased by 3 per cent.
“Scammers are sophisticated criminals and are becoming more targeted in how they exploit Australian consumers and businesses,” ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said.
“These criminals are posing as genuine businesses that a consumer has recently dealt with, sending fake invoices with altered payment details so that the money ends up with the scammer.”
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