WA news LIVE: Grandmother saved from losing life savings in ‘blood boiling' scam
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9.31am
Grandmother saved from losing life savings in 'blood boiling' scam
A bank branch manager who saved an elderly woman from being fleeced of her life savings has described the scammer as 'the biggest lowlife on the planet'.
9 News Perth revealed that an 84-year-old grandmother made an unusual request about her internet banking limit – it wa set at $5000 and she was asking to increase it to over $50,000.
It raised an immediate red flag, but then staff noticed the woman was holding and notebook and her phone, and someone else was listening in.
It was revealed the notebook had a list of cues a scammer had told the woman to write down to convince the bank to change the limit.
When they searched for the phone number, it immediately showed it was likely a scammer.
The person on the other end of the line had been pressuring the recently widowed woman for days.
NAB East Maitland branch manager Vanessa Kruger, who spotted the issue, said the scammer had remotely accessed the woman's account and had convinced her they had given her $50,000, which she now owed.
'They're the biggest lowlife on the planet. They prey on people who are vulnerable and they do whatever they can to trick them into handing over their money,' she said.
'They use whatever means and it actually makes my blood boil to be honest.'
ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said a remote access scam started with a call out of the blue, telling you there is something wrong with one of your accounts and will ask you to download software that will allow them to take over.
Lowe warned the community not to listen.
9.31am
Across the nation and around the world
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T he ABC is set to axe its long-running current affairs show Q+A after more than 500 episodes and 17 seasons.
A former pupil killed 10 people and himself at a high school in the southern Austrian city of Graz in the worst school shooting in Austria's modern history.
Australia has imposed Magnitsky-style sanctions on two senior Israeli ministers for their roles in serious human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank, in a move that marks a significant escalation in Canberra's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Anthony Albanese had a chance on Tuesday to expand the scope of his second-term agenda, following his thumping election win on May 3, and lay out a more ambitious reform plan. It was a chance he very deliberately chose not to take.
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