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 devious fraudsters – who changed just one letter in the email address of her real carrier.
Believing the invoice was genuine, the woman paid more than $800,000 into the reported account to complete the purchase of her dream home.
Instead, her hard-earned money was quickly transferred from the scammer’s fake account and used to buy cryptocurrency abroad.
The woman only realized she had been scammed two days later.
After contacting her bank, the woman filed a police report via ReportCyber.
An AFP-led Joint Policing Cybercrime Coordination Center (JPC3) worked with state and territory police and the woman’s bank to locate the missing money.
Scammers changed just one letter to a real email address, prompting the woman to send more than $800,000 to someone she thought was her carrier (stock image)
Incredibly, investigators were able to recover $505,000 of the woman’s money after freezing the scammer’s bank account.
Scammers usually spread stolen money to multiple accounts in Australia and around the world, making it almost impossible to track.
And the woman’s luck didn’t end there: Researchers then discovered that more of her money — nearly $300,000 — had been converted into cryptocurrency.
Crypto exchange platform Binance was asked to freeze the scammer’s account and $272,000 was recovered.
After the months-long investigation, $777,000 was returned to the woman, meaning she only lost $36,000 to scammers.
AFP Detective Acting Chief Inspector Darryl Parrish said it was “crucial” for Aussies to double-check emails and bank 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 being urged to triple check online payments after a woman was scammed out of as much as $813,000 after being sent a fake invoice (stock image)
AFP Senior Cybercrime Analyst Carolyne Burge said Australians should be extra vigilant when transferring a large sum of money.
“If you receive an email asking you to make payments into a new bank account, we strongly recommend that you regularly contact the person you are dealing with on a known contact number,” she said.
She said customers should never use a phone number in an email as it is most likely a scam number, and should instead search online.
According to the Australian Cyber Security Center (ACSC), self-reported BEC scams have caused a total loss of approximately $80 million between 2022 and 2023.
The average loss to a victim was as much as $39,000.