Australians are being urged to triple check online payments after a woman was scammed out of $813,000 after being duped by a fake invoice.
The South Australian woman was in the process of buying her dream home when she received an email from who she thought was her conveyancer.
But the email was actually sent by clever scammers, who changed just one letter in the email address of its real carrier.
Believing the bill to be real, the woman paid more than $800,000 into the account provided to finalize the purchase of her dream home.
Instead, his hard-earned money was quickly transferred from the scammer’s fake transfer account and used to purchase cryptocurrency abroad.
The woman did not realize until two days later that she had been scammed.
After contacting her bank, the woman filed a police report through ReportCyber.
A Joint Police Cybercrime Coordination Center (JPC3), run by the AFP, worked with state and territory police and the woman’s bank to locate the missing cash.
Scammers changed just one letter in a real email address, leading woman to send more than $800,000 to who she thought was her carrier (file image)
Incredibly, investigators were able to recover $505,000 of the woman’s money after freezing the scammer’s bank account.
Scammers often spread stolen funds across multiple accounts across Australia and the world, making them almost impossible to trace.
And the woman’s luck didn’t stop there: investigators discovered that more of her funds (almost $300,000) had been transferred to cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance was asked to freeze the scammer’s account and $272,000 was recovered.
After months of investigation, $777,000 was returned to the woman, meaning she only lost $36,000 to the scammers.
AFP acting superintendent Darryl Parrish said it was “crucial” Australians check their emails and banking details.
He said businesses can protect their online accounts by setting up multi-factor authentication (MFA), making it harder for scammers to gain access.
Australians are urged to triple check online payments after a woman was scammed out of a staggering $813,000 after she was sent a fake invoice (file image)
AFP senior cybercrime analyst Carolyne Burge says Australians should exercise caution when transferring large sums of money.
“If you receive an email asking to make payments to a new bank account, we strongly recommend that you contact the person you deal with regularly via a known contact number,” he said.
He said customers should never use a phone number included in an email because it is most likely a fraudulent number and instead search online.
According to the Australian Cyber Security Center (ACSC), self-reported BEC scams accumulated a total loss of around $80 million in 2022-2023.
The average loss to a victim was a staggering $39,000.