It was a month after Sarah’s* father had transferred more than $1 million to what he thought was an investment bank that he had a “gut instinct” that something was wrong.
After selling the family home in 2022, he had gone online looking for investment opportunities, and found a website purporting to be Standard Chartered, an investment bank based in the UK with offices in Australia.
He had a phone call with someone from the bank, using real names of employees who worked in its Sydney office.
Sarah’s father made multiple efforts to check if there were any red flags.
“He went through all the checks and balances,” Sarah told Information Age.
“Everything lined up.”
He even went to his own bank and showed them the documents he had received from Standard Chartered, which outlined that the money he was to invest would be sent to a ‘big four’ Australian bank account.
When they declined to match the interest rate on offer, Sarah’s father increased his withdrawal limit and transferred more than $1 million into the bank account.
After feeling that something was wrong, he attempted to contact the Standard Chartered representative, but they stopped returning his calls.
It was later revealed that he had never been on the legitimate Standard Chartered website, and had never talked to an actual employee at the investment bank.
Falling for a bank scam devastates its victims. Photo: Shutterstock
Instead, he had been on a clone, phishing replica of the website, and the scammers were posing as real workers.
He had fallen victim to an impersonated bank scam.
“It all looked legitimate,” Sarah said.
“They had the letterheads and provided a portal login to an actual website that mimicked their website and showed where the investment was.
“It was a very, very sophisticated scam.
“Other victims I’ve met, they’ve lost everything, it’s just devastating.”
The push for change
Sarah’s father is among the estimated more than 600,000 Australians who fall victim to a scam each year.
In 2023, Australians reported losses from these scams of $2.74 billion.
Sarah has now teamed up with a number of other victims of similar scams and fraud to push a seven-point election platform on scams reform, which they have now sent to every single MP and Senator in federal parliament.
The Scam Victims Lobby Group’s key asks include the creation of a mandatory fraud accountability fund, greater power to regulatory bodies, and a requirement for victims to be reimbursed unless they were grossly negligent.
The group has been left disappointed and disheartened by the recent Scams Prevention Framework (SPF), which was passed by parliament last month, and its lack of mandatory compensation and information gathering powers.
The legislation was passed with the support of both major parties and lays the groundwork for a “world-leading” scam prevention framework, which will require banks, telcos and social media firms to prevent, detect, disrupt, respond to and report scams and attempted scams.
The framework will not include a mandatory requirement for the reimbursement of victims of scams, as is in place in the UK.
Sarah said the scams framework “falls really, really short” and will not do enough to prevent these types of fraud and protect victims.
“It’s like a little finger shake at the banks – it’s nothing,” she said.
“At the moment the way we as victims have any form of fair and just results is literally by spending so much money through the court system, and most of the time the people who have lost all this money can’t do that.”
Predatory scammers
Another member of the Scam Victims Lobby Group is Harriet Spring.
Just days after her 95-year-old mother’s home had been sold, Spring got a phone call from a man with a “posh English accent”.
The man said he was from ING, who Spring banked with, and offered a special on fixed-term deposits.
The offer was on par with others and wasn't outrageously good, Spring said.
Harriet Spring fell for a bank impersonation scam. Photo: Supplied
The $1.6 million from the sale of her mother’s house was meant to go towards the cost of the nursing home, with the rest going to five children and 15 grandchildren.
Spring went to her mother’s bank, Teachers Mutual Bank, and asked if they could match the interest rate offered by the man who said he was from ING.
The man on the phone told Spring that it was a legal requirement for international banks to put fixed-term deposits into other local banks first, and said that the money would be transferred into a Westpac account.
Someone from her mother’s bank did call to check whether Spring knew who she was transferring to, but did not question the transaction from ING to a Westpac account.
“It should have been questioned, but it went straight through,” Spring told Information Age.
The man, who had been speaking to Spring for several months by this point, was not from ING at all.
The money was quickly transferred into 10 other Australian accounts, and eventually overseas.
Soon after, there was $200 left in the account.
“Every scam victim has a story like this,” she said.
“They’re investing in big things that usually aren’t out of greed, they’re usually making sensible investment decisions and they’ve been predated on by sophisticated scammers.”
Far from having helped her, Spring said the new government scams framework has just made it “more complex” for scam victims looking to seek compensation.
“It means they’re not serious about it and it’s just another kick it down the road policy.”
Spring said she was also left disappointed that the reforms did not require banks to be transparent with all the information it has in relation to the scam and providing this to the victim.
“That would solve a whole lot of stuff,” she said.
“That is the one simple thing they could do – that would make such a difference.”
Consumers face an uphill battle for redress. Photo: Shutterstock
Spring said the current approach to scams is the “greatest consumer failure in Australian history”.
“Back in the day the bank robbers went to the bank, held it up and the bank lost money,” she said.
“Now it’s the customers losing the money and the banks aren’t investing to protect them because it doesn’t hurt their bottom line.”
It could happen to you
Sylvia Chou lost $2.6 million to an investment trading scam in 2019.
Since then, she has been in a “constant battle” with the banks to receive compensation.
“Instead of giving me the assistance I needed they pushed me to the corner each time, harder and harder,” Chou told Information Age.
The scam framework paints a “miserable picture” for victims of scams, Chou said.
“We’ve introduced a bill not to protect the consumers but just to protect their losses,” she said.
“They’ve made it even more difficult for victims to recover money and to stand up and fight.”
All three scam victims have a clear and simple message to all Australians: it can be you, and it probably will be you.
“Everyone is a scam victim – it’s either happened to you or you are a future scam victim,” Spring said.
“They prey on psychology, they groom you, they work out your personality and what’s going to make you tick and they’re using AI to back up everything.
“As individuals we don’t stand a chance against them.”
Sarah said it’s “just a matter of time” until you or someone you know falls victim to one of these frauds.
“It can and probably most likely will happen to most people at some point in their lives,” she said
“This stuff is so prevalent, and banks don’t want it to be known about because it’ll change how they have to do things, and they don’t want to do that.”
* not her real name
