A National Australia Bank employee saved an elderly customer from losing all his money when he suspected a scam.
Sarah Woods, who has been a banker for 16 years, was working at a Hobart branch when a customer in her 80s asked to withdraw $10,000 to renovate the kitchen.
When she requested that the check be made out to her, Mrs. Woods became suspicious and knew “something was up.”
“He was very fragile and panicked,” she said.
in a statementNAB said Ms Woods decided to press the customer further with questions to try to confirm whether she was about to become a victim of a scam.
NAB Bank teller Sarah Woods (pictured) said the customer seemed “fragile” and his request for money was a red flag.
A customer in his 80s was threatened and told to lie to bank staff
“Every time I asked him about his renovations he gave me a different answer,” he said.
“He was getting more and more uncomfortable and said, ‘I really have to do this and get out of here,’ and that’s when I knew I wasn’t going to get the money for him.
“I told him I was very concerned about where the money was going and that these were warning signs of a scam.”
Both Sarah and her branch manager escorted the man to a private office and when the old man realized what was happening, he collapsed.
“He looked at me, took my hand and told me everything about the call he had received, the demand for a bank check that the scammers made and the lie they wanted him to tell me,” she said.
“He said the scammers got angry with him on the phone, threatened him and told him not to trust bank staff.”
The scammers had convinced the customer to empty his account and told him that if staff asked him why he was withdrawing the money, he had to lie and say it was for renewals.
Fortunately, the lifelong bankers’ instinct was correct and Mrs. Woods stopped the fraudulent transaction, saving the man his savings.
“He said, ‘In fact, you’ve saved every penny of my money,’ and from then on we had a little bond and he kept hugging me,” she said.
The man left the bank happy but now aware of the scams and demands for his money.
The Australian Government’s Scam Watch tells Australians there are common signs of a scam to look out for, including when someone asks them to set up a new account or PAYID (pictured, a man on a computer, not a scammer) .
“It’s very gratifying to know I’ve saved this man money, but it shows that scammers will stop at nothing.”
NAB Group Investigations Executive Chris Sheehan said it highlighted how important the bank’s fight against scams is.
“Colleagues across the bank work every day to reduce the impact of scams,” he said.
“We have frontline colleagues in branches like Sarah and on the phone at Fraud Ops, supporting customers in the moments after a scam has occurred or been stopped, to colleagues working on proactive initiatives designed to protect customers. customers”.
Sheehan admitted that although the bank has more to do, he was pleased to have seen a decrease in scam losses between October and December 2023, despite a high number of customer reports of scams.
The former Australian Federal Police executive said he believed initiatives such as removing text message links and blocking payments to some high-risk crypto platforms are having a positive impact.