An elaborate fake job scam fooled a cybersecurity expert who ended up bilking out $150,000 of his family’s money.
Josh, who asked not to share his real name, has a degree in cyber security and clicked on what he thought was a job advert on Instagram for Woolworths.
He was led to a WhatsApp chat where he was told that the vacancy at the supermarket had been filled, but that a position was vacant at the ParkRoyal hotel chain.
Josh was skeptical at first, but the scammers answered the questions to his satisfaction.
“It just spiraled out of control,” Josh told Nine News.
A fake Instagram job posting led to a cybersecurity expert being bilked out of $150,000 by scammers
‘They had a WhatsApp group that I also joined.
“That WhatsApp group was supposedly about people doing the same job and each person would send screenshots of how much they got paid with photos of people, supposedly normal people, living normal lives.”
He received online ‘training’ and after providing his BSB and account number, $100 was deposited into his account for completing simple tasks.
Josh was then told that he had to transfer his own money to get more orders and get paid.
He paid $120 and received a $500 commission after completing 40 orders.
Hooked on the promise of easy income, he continued to transfer money even after he noticed that nothing was being paid to him.
In just three days, Josh transferred $150,000 to the scammers to obtain commissions.
“I just ended up emptying my savings accounts,” Josh said.
“What makes it worse is that I reached a point of desperation that I got into my parents’ accounts and drained their money as well.”
He even received a warning from NAB that the money was going into a scam account, but ignored it.
It wasn’t until the third day that he realized it was a scam.
“If the job were legit, everyone in this world would sign up for it, getting paid $60 an hour by clicking two buttons on a computer,” he said.
“I’m thinking, ‘How the hell did I fall into that?’
“It’s just so stupid.”
Australians lost at least $3.1 billion to scammers in 2022, marking a staggering 80 percent increase from the previous year.
Since then, Josh has struggled with depression and remains deeply ashamed of the way he was recorded, despite considering himself very ‘digitally savvy’.
Josh didn’t tell his family he’d lost the money until ten months afterward and even then couldn’t admit how it happened.
The scam has been reported to the police.
According to the latest Targeting Scams report, scammers will pocket at least $3.1 billion in 2022, an 80 percent increase in total losses from the previous year.
“Australians have lost more money to scams in 2022 than ever before, but the true cost of scams is far more than a dollar amount as they also cause emotional distress to victims, their families and businesses,” Catriona Lowe, deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. said.
The report used data reported to the ACCC’s Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, IDCARE and other government agencies.
Scamwatch received 239,237 scam reports last year with financial losses totaling more than $569 million, an increase of 76 percent compared to losses reported last year.
The average losses suffered by victims in 2022 increased by more than 50 percent to almost $20,000.
The increase is partly due to scammers using increasingly sophisticated technology and techniques to lure and deceive victims.
“We have seen alarming new tactics emerge that make it incredibly difficult to detect scams,” Ms Lowe said.
“This includes everything from impersonating official phone numbers, email addresses and websites of legitimate organizations to scam texts that appear in the same conversation thread as genuine messages.”