This means that one in 50 people will lose thousands of dollars every single year. For a town the size of Seymour, that’s 129 people who will be robbed of their hard-earned cash in 2023.
Before you think it can’t happen to you, please listen to the following stories.
Case one
Ten years ago I received an email from a colleague. It said that he was stuck in Lebanon and that he had been robbed of his passports and wallet. If I sent him $5000 he would repay me as soon as he made it home.
So I rang him and we had a good laugh. Someone had hijacked his email account and sent out this ridiculous story. Unfortunately, a different friend, a retired maths teacher, rushed to the bank and paid the money.
Case two
Raymond is 30 years old and works as a film editor. One night he was roused from sleep at 2.30am with an urgent message from his bank. There was suspicious activity on his account and he should check his balance as soon as possible. He followed the link and it took him to a webpage that contained the bank’s logo. Within minutes, $2000 disappeared from his savings account.
Case three
Dorothy is a 78-year-old widow who was saving to take her daughter on a cruise. She recently received a recorded message from a finance department to say she was owed a $27 refund. All she had to do was hand over her bank details. The next day she noticed $3000 was missing from her savings account.
I like to think that I am smart enough to avoid the common pitfalls. That was until I saw a pair of shoes for sale in my news feed. They were perfect and I quickly parted with the $57 needed to make them mine. Two days later the website disappeared.
The girl at the bank was understanding.
“You are the second person today,” she said sympathetically. An earlier customer reported a missing $1000 for a puppy that never arrived for his grandson’s birthday.
My friend David works for a foreign aid organisation. I asked him, who is doing this?
“Imagine a 23-year-old man in a developing country,” he said.
“His little sister needs a life-saving operation, so he borrows the money from a loan shark. The only way he can pay it back is by working for six hours a night in a warehouse with 200 other people. He spends his time making websites and calling people in Australia.”
The problem is not going away anytime soon. I asked my family and friends how they protected themselves.
1. If you don’t recognise the number on your phone, don’t answer the call.
2. Buy locally, even if it means you pay a little bit more.
3. Talk to your bank at a local branch. Never give out private information over the phone.
