A university student lost $12,000 he had saved for a student exchange trip to the United States in just ten minutes after falling victim to an alarmingly simple scam.
Matthew Sweeney, 22, a criminology and criminal justice student at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, was working at a supplement store in Braeside on Wednesday night when he suddenly saw an unusual pop-up alert on his phone.
The pop-up was a message telling you that an unauthorized payment of $1,900 had been made from your ANZ Plus account and that you should act now to prevent it from being made.
He said the pop-up appeared to come legitimately from the bank and, when he clicked on it, he was directed to a “carbon copy” of the ANZ website; the only difference is that instead of “anz.com.au”, it was ‘anz.com’.
Matthew Sweeney, 22, lost $12,000 of his hard-earned savings after falling victim to an elaborate scam.
The college student was then asked to enter his phone number where he was sent a one-time password.
Sweeney said he then tried to access his ANZ Plus account from his phone but was locked out.
She immediately called the bank and was soon given access to get back into her account, but within 10 minutes the scammer on the other end had stolen all of the $12,000 of her savings she had earned in preparation for her four months abroad.
“I get scam messages all the time and it’s very obvious when it’s a scam, but this one was very well done,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘I’m 22 years old, relatively tech-savvy, but there’s a new wave of scams emerging, and it wasn’t even a scam, it was straight up fraud.
“The fact is that I have no money now and I’m leaving in two months.”
Sweeney completed a form with ANZ’s cyber security team and was given another report to complete so the matter could be referred to police.
He said he studied cybersecurity in college and is not sure he will get the money back.
Sweeney said he received a pop-up alert from what appeared to be ANZ Plus informing him of an unauthorized transaction.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this. It is rare that in ten minutes (the scammer) can break into a supposedly high-security account,’ she stated.
“I’ve worked enough in cybersecurity in college to know that the money has probably already passed through several accounts.”
To make matters worse, the 22-year-old had taken the first semester of college this year to work as much as possible and save for his trip.
Since then, his family has launched a GoFundMe to help raise some money for your next exchange.
Sweeney added that because he was serving customers at the time, he couldn’t properly focus on what the pop-up was asking him to do.
“If anyone gets a pop-up like that, just throw it away and take your time,” he said.
He added that he may have had to enter his bank PIN number, but he couldn’t remember exactly what he sent during the panic.
He also later received an email notification that a new device had been registered to his bank account that was from a different iPhone than the one he was using.
Sweeney said ANZ is doing everything it can to try to recover the funds, but added that a customer service agent incorrectly told him the fraud team did not operate after 5pm.
Mr Sweeney was working at a supplement store at the time and was serving customers when the message arrived.
Instead, he waited until the next day to speak to them, where he learned they were available 24/7.
The loss of his hard-earned money has also taken its toll on the college student.
“It was very hard, I was working and I had to close the store early and go home,” he said.
He now plans to call the national identity and cyber support service IDCARE.
The service connects people with expert identity and cybersecurity case managers who provide the best advice on how to respond to data breaches, scams, identity theft and cybersecurity concerns.
ANZ has been contacted for comment.
