Ben Fordham is urging Australians to check their travel money cards after falling victim to an ’embarrassing’ fraud involving OnlyFans.
The 2GB host visited his local Commonwealth Bank branch to close the accounts linked to his and his wife’s travel cards.
Fordham told the bank teller that he would no longer be using the travel cards and wanted to transfer the remaining money to his regular bank account.
However, when the Commonwealth Bank employee pulled up the bill on his computer, Fordham immediately noticed ‘OnlyFans’ in the transaction history – a platform where users pay subscription fees to access adult content.
“I had an embarrassing conversation with the gentleman behind the counter…he pretended not to see it,” Fordham said.
‘It was an awkward moment where I said to him, “Look, I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I swear I haven’t spent any money on OnlyFans.”
The bank teller told Fordham he was being targeted by a scammer.
The transaction history showed that $50USD was transferred to ‘OnlyFans.com’ and returned to the account just minutes later.
Ben Fordham told listeners he had an embarrassing conversation with a Commonwealth Bank employee after seeing ‘OnlyFans’ on his travel card account transaction list
The Commonwealth Bank employee explained that Fordham was the target of fraud, with the bank recognizing the illegal transaction and reversing it within minutes.
Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn described the ‘Onlyfans.com’ transactions as garden variety fraud.
“Hopefully it wasn’t too awkward or embarrassing for you,” Mr. Comyn told Fordham.
‘In this case, you as the account holder were not involved in that actual transaction because it was carried out by another third party. That’s an easier problem to deal with because you had nothing to do with it.
“You’re covered by our fraud guarantee, which is our ability to reverse your money and give you all your money back.”
Fordham urged his listeners to be vigilant and check their travel cards regularly as they often go unchecked when someone returns from their travels.
Mr Comyn agreed, saying it was an account fraudster who was targeted because it was not checked often.
‘Unfortunately, we all have to be very alert to all kinds of fraud and scams.’
Mr Comyn added that the Commonwealth Bank was organizing around 800 seminars over the next 12 months to educate its customers on what to look out for when it comes to fraud and scams.
According to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s ScamWatch, Australians have lost a whopping $208.2 million to scams so far this year.