A grandmother who was scammed out of $1.6 million by a man with a ‘posh British accent’ posing as an ING employee has called on banks to compensate scam victims.
Harriet Spring was approached last November by a man called ‘George’ who told her he worked at her bank, ING, and asked if she was interested in good interest rates on term deposits.
The call came at a time of weakness for Ms Spring, who was otherwise busy moving her 95-year-old mother to a retirement home on the NSW south coast.
“It was the end of a very difficult year, and this man made it so easy,” Ms Spring told the newspaper ABC.
The Canberra architect spoke to ‘George’ for months, but the alarm bells never went off because what he had to offer was ‘nothing crazy, nothing special’.
“So I didn’t think, ‘That sounds too good to be true,’” Ms. Spring added.
In the end, she handed over $1.6 million, her mother’s entire life savings.
“It didn’t sound dodgy in any way, you know, all the emails had ING branding… they completely fooled me,” Ms Spring said.
“I was just so relieved that I could finally put it all behind me, and we could just settle down and focus on Mom.”
ING played no role in the process and the scammer used convincing but fake email signatures.
The money was eventually transferred to a Westpac account before being diverted to a dozen other Australian bank accounts where it could not be traced.
Ms Spring’s requests for information were declined due to ‘privacy reasons’.
Harriet Spring (pictured) was approached in November last year by a man called ‘George’ who told her he worked at her bank, ING, and asked if she was interested in good interest rates on term deposits
The call came at a time of weakness for Mrs Spring, who was otherwise busy moving her 95-year-old mother (pictured) to a retirement home. She ended up losing all of her mother’s savings
Westpac would not comment on individual cases but said preventing scams was one of its “biggest priorities”.
“When customers from other banks transfer money to scammers, we do everything we can to recover money on their behalf where possible,” a spokesperson said.
Ms Spring’s experience is unfortunately not unique and it is not the first time victims have been targeted by men with posh British accents.
An Australian businessman was conned out of $130,000 in a sophisticated text message scam by a man with a British accent.
Australians have lost $2.7 billion to fraud in the past year, according to figures from the US Department of State the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
It’s a marginal decline from the record high of $3.1 billion lost in 2022, but still higher than the figure two years earlier.
Stephanie Tonkin, chief executive of the Consumer Action Law Center, said Ms Spring’s story was very common.
“Our attorneys hear reports every day about people being deceived by very complicated, sophisticated scams,” she told the program.
“These scammers aren’t people in their basement anymore.
‘They are people working for multinational companies with resources and the ability to use technology [artificial intelligence] AI to cheat people out of their money.
“In many cases, it is virtually impossible to detect a scam, and therefore it is virtually impossible to protect yourself.”
“It didn’t sound dodgy in any way, you know, all the emails had ING branding… they completely fooled me,” said Ms Spring (Photo: Some of the correspondence with the scammer)
Mrs. Spring feels like she can’t trust anyone anymore.
She has renewed calls for Australian banks to compensate scam victims and shared a petition on social media urging governments to “introduce strong rules that force companies to detect and prevent scams – and from banks demand that they reimburse victims’.
‘Scams can happen to anyone and this government is behaving as if the banks are more important than their voters!’ Mrs. Spring wrote.
The legislation would bring them in line with British banks which have signed a voluntary repayment code since 2019, which will become mandatory in October.
“You need to be assured that your money is kept safe and if it isn’t, you should be refunded,” Ms Tonkin added.
‘We [the consumers] Because we simply don’t have information and don’t have access to information like unusual transactions, like mule account records, we don’t have the information to be able to protect ourselves.”