Scam victims ask why they’re paying the price if bank processes can be replicated so easily

One phone call “circulates on repeat” in Queensland widow Trina Panther’s mind.

She was in bed on a Sunday morning when her phone started ringing. She didn’t recognise the number and almost declined it.

But then she thought of her family interstate and her dad’s recent medical scare.

Ms Panther answered and on the other end of the line was “Martin from the ANZ fraud squad”, who spoke calmly with a British accent and said her credit card had been compromised.

“He said, ‘Have you recently made any recent purchases using your credit card to BudgetAir or Mytrip or Booking.com?'” Ms Panther said.

She had.

Without Ms Panther handing over any information, “Martin” recited her full name, credit card number and other personal details.

“There were no real red flags going off at this particular point in time and I’m thinking he’s got my address, he’s got my card numbers,” she said.

He said to cancel the fraudulent transactions on her card, all she had to do was provide a code he’d sent to her mobile phone.

Within 10 minutes of providing the code, she received another call from an unknown number. This time it was the actual ANZ crime squad.

They informed her she had been scammed out of $114,000.

The code Ms Panther had provided authorised the transactions out of her account.

“She was basically saying, ‘Look, you’ve given away the code so basically, you’ve made the transactions,'” Ms Panther said.

She said the bank offered her an information pack but made no attempts to retrieve the money.

“I haven’t really slept very much, let alone eaten very much,” she said.

“That money is my late husband’s money.

“I’m just ashamed, I’m embarrassed. I feel hopeless, like I’ve let the family down. I’m just heartbroken.”

Ms Panther said the police had also done little to investigate the scammers — directing her to submit a complaint on the ASIC website.

Queensland Police were unable to comment.

“They’re [scammers are] modern-day bank robbers,” she said.

“Gone are the days of going with a balaclava and a gun and holding up a bank. They get you over the phone instead.”

Millions down the drain

An Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report found Australians lost $3.1 billion to scams in 2022, an increase of 80 per cent from 2021.

Major bank customers lost more than $550 million to scams last financial year with 31,700 customers impacted, according to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Sunshine Coast resident Greg Haynes lost $40,000 to a sophisticated spoofing bank scam last September while he was working overseas.

He said he had planned to use the money to buy his daughter her first car or help send her to university.

“All those sorts of things … [have] been taken away,” Mr Haynes said.

“$40,000 isn’t very much, but for some people it’s a hell of a lot of money.”

After receiving the phone call from the “ANZ crime squad”, he questioned their authenticity, but the scammers were ready.

“Within 10 seconds, there was a text message saying you’re speaking with David Hale from the fraud department and that put my mind at ease,” Mr Haynes said.

He said banks had a responsibility to upgrade their processes if they could be so easily replicated by scammers.

“Like text messages, if it’s able to be compromised by spoofing, it should never be allowed to be used anymore,” he said.

Despite being unable to help Ms Panther and Mr Haynes, ANZ bank head of customer protection Shaq Johnson urged scam victims to contact them.

“We always attempt to recover funds customers have lost to scams or fraud,” Mr Johnson said.

“Whether funds can be recovered depends on a number of factors including whether they are transferred to another financial institution.

“In many instances scammers on-transfer the funds in just minutes.”

‘Less mature than expected’

Ms Panther and Mr Haynes are not alone.

A new report from ASIC has found the four major banks absorbed just 4 per cent of total scam losses with customers bearing 96 per cent of all losses.

ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court said banks had made significant investments in their anti-scam efforts, but the overall approach was “less mature than expected”.

Banks detected and stopped just 13 per cent of reported scam payments from customers’ accounts, according to the report.

“Banks need to reconsider the ways they respond to and engage with scam victims to reduce further distress and help them better manage the situation,” Ms Court said.

According to ASIC, the reimbursement rate for scam victims was between 2 and 5 per cent of their losses and on average only 11 per cent of people were compensated.

$20k lost on average

The number of reports to the federal government’s Scamwatch program fell by 16 per cent in 2022, but losses experienced by each victim rose by more than 50 per cent to an average of $20,000.

Cyber security expert David Tuffley said scammers were growing in numbers and uniting to become more sophisticated.

“It is possible to buy a toolkit on the dark web, which basically tells these people how to go about working a scam on people,” Dr Tuffley said.

“Some of them are so detailed they even have a support line, if somebody is not clear about how to do one of these scams.”

He called for Australian banks to adopt a similar approach to the United Kingdom’s voluntary Contingent Reimbursement Model Code, where banks reimburse 90 per cent of fraudulent transactions.

“Banks definitely do have a responsibility here,” Dr Tuffley said.

‘A honeypot’ for scammers

Australian Banking Association chief executive Anna Bligh said reimbursing more scam victims would only cause the illegal behaviour to increase.

“To be clear, these scammers are in fact international criminals, and we should call them for what they are,” Ms Bligh said.

“If the scammers know that all money will be refunded at the cost to banks, then it becomes a honeypot for scamming.”

She said authorities needed to have more a unified approach to protecting customers from scammers but people also needed to educate themselves.

“What banks can’t do is make decisions for customers, and if customers are transferring money to people who are effectively criminals then it becomes very difficult,” Ms Bligh said.