‘You're on your own': Tradie's $17,000 scam nightmare

News.com.au

5 hours ago

A tradie has been left gutted after losing over $17,000 in an elaborate spoofing scam.
Bradley Turner runs a cementing company called Pure Deco and he never thought that he would become a scam victim.
On June 1st on a lazy Sunday Mr Turner, who lives in Sydney with his wife and young child, received a text message that appeared to be from his bank ANZ.
He believed the message was legitimate because it appeared in an already-established message chain he had with the bank.
The message alerted him that his voice ID had been updated and that if he didn't request this change, he should contact the number written below immediately.
The 33-year-old panicked because he hadn't updated any verifications with the bank and it was for his business account.
The tradie insisted he never would have rung the number if he had just received a text message from a random number, but because it appeared to be from ANZ on his phone and was alongside other official messages, he fell for it.
'I'm pretty clued in,' Mr Turner told news.com.au.
'The guy made me panic. I spoke to three people, they make you panic.'
Mr Turner was unaware that scammers are becoming more sophisticated and using state-of-the-art technology to 'spoof' their numbers and get into established texting threads.
When the tradie rang the number included in the text, he was told that someone was trying to scam his account from New Zealand and he needed to immediately transfer his money to a new secure account.
He was then sent a follow-up text with his new bank details and, once again, the text appeared on his previous ANZ text chain.
From his perspective, it all sounded legit. If anything, he thought he was preventing himself from being scammed.
Mr Turner transferred two separate payments, one totalling $16,941 and another payment of around $7000, to the new bank account.
At first, he didn't think anything was wrong and even felt relieved that he had seen the text and been able to resolve the situation quickly.
Then, by chance, a mate rang and Mr Turner told him he'd had a stressful morning dealing with his bank.
When he explained what had happened his friend immediately told him to call his bank and double-check.
'I've never dealt with a scam or fraud call before. There were a couple of red flags, but of course, you don't think about it until you're finished,' he said.
'I rang ANZ and was told it was a scam. I had to report it to the police.'
Even though he contacted the bank only an hour and a half after he made the transfers, it was already mostly too late.
ANZ was able to stop the $7000 transfer, but the almost $17,000 sum was already with another bank.
Mr Turner was horrified after realising what had happened.
'It felt horrendous. I felt like I'd been violated. You feel so violated that someone has managed to trick you,' he said.
He argued that losing that amount of money is serious and can derail a person's life, saying $17,000 is 'a lot no matter who you are'.
The bank reportedly told Mr Turner that there was no way to recover his money, with the tradie claiming the message was basically 'you're on your own', which left him fuming.
'They make it like you should know about this already. This (scam) was really well done and scamming is getting a lot bigger,' he said.
Ultimately, he was told that, because he completed the initial transfer, it was basically on him and the money was gone.
When asked about Mr Turner's experience, ANZ said in a statement it was unable to comment on individual customers.
'We always attempt to recover funds customers have lost to scams or fraud,' it said. 'However, the ability to recover funds depends on a number of factors including how quickly it is reported to us, whether they are transferred to another financial institution, and the speed in which funds are then on-transferred by scammers. In many instances, cyber criminals on-transfer funds within minutes, or use them to purchase cryptocurrency.'
Mr Turner said he wants the bank to take responsibility for the fact the scammers were able to successfully get into the same texting chain and spoof their official communications.
'It came through their feed and it is so frustrating. I don't see how they can wipe their hands of it,' he said.
'If it was through a random number I'd understand.'
At the end of the day, he feels ANZ should take more responsibility and he feels his trust in the bank has been broken.
'They've let me down and now they just want to palm me off,' he said.
The tradie believes he isn't fully at fault because it comes down to ANZ not having the 'right security' and, as a result, there should be a way for him to get his money back.
Losing the $17,000 stung badly because the money was there to pay his workers and now it is just gone.
'Things are expensive. You're trying to run a business. It was from my business account, and I have seven employees. That is a couple of weeks of wages. Do I send the boys to collect the wages from (ANZ)?' he asked.
Mr Turner isn't alone.
In February, news.com.au reported an eerily similar story about another Aussie tradie who lost $58,000 in a spoofing scam.
Furkan Colak, from Melbourne, was in the process of trying to buy a house while also saving up for his dad's knee surgery when he received a text message that looked to be from ANZ but was actually from a scammer.
Mr Colak previously told news.com.au that the whole experience left him 'shaking' and it has been tough to get over losing so much money.
'It comes to the point where you're almost over it and then you think what you could have done with the money,' he said.