A family has been left furious at a bank or returning less than $50 to their stepmum after she was scammed out of nearly $10,000.
The 75-year-old woman only recovered $48 of the $8,400 she lost to scammers who spent six hours on the phone to her while pretending to be from NBN.
She was tricked into giving the scammers remote access to her accounts during the call.
The NBN had warned residents in her area that they were upgrading services in the area which gave the woman a false sense of security that the call was genuine.
During the call scammers told the woman to stay by her computer while they asked a number of security questions.
They told her she was eligible for a $2,470 rebate due to slow internet speeds before asking her to step away from the computer due to potential radiation emissions.
Once the conversation ended they asked her to leave the computer off for an hour.
Everything seemed normal until the woman logged into her emails days later to find that her daily transaction limit had been changed without her knowing.
A family has been left furious at a bank or returning less than $50 to their stepmum after she was scammed out of nearly $10,000
Her stepdaughter Felicity, who did not want to share her real name, said National Australia Bank did not try hard enough to recover the money.
‘My parents are extremely shaken and they are now too frightened to do anything on the computer and I get as it also rattles me as to how easily it seems to have happened,’ she told news.com.au.
‘I am deeply frustrated on behalf of my parents and concerned for others who, despite having technological access for their daily activities, lack the scepticism or most current knowledge to identify and avoid scams.’
NAB only spent a month trying to recover the money before closing its case.
Felicity was told an ‘NAB Fraud analyst had performed a liability assessment and deemed that your parents are liable for the losses’.
The assessment was not provided however, and is only available internally.
NAB executive of group investigations and fraud Chris Sheehan said he was unable to comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.
Felicity revealed the loss could have been much worse as her stepmother was due to receive a large house settlement two weeks after she was scammed.
Mr Sheehan noted there had been an increase in Aussies falling victims to scammers.
‘These criminals are continuously evolving the way they target Australians,’ he said.
Mr Sheehan said under no circumstances should anyone provide someone with remote access to their devices.
The scam victim’s stepdaughter Felicity, who did not want to share her real name, said National Australia Bank did not try hard enough to recover the money
This can happen when victims are contacted via phone, text or email by a scammer falsely claiming to be from a familiar company offering them help with something.
A National Anti-Scam Centre spokesperson said remote access scams require the victim to download screen sharing software which will let them remotely control the device.
After that they typically ask fake security questions in an attempt to get victim’s to provide their real passwords to use later on when they are accessing accounts.
Felicity said she believes the scammers who targeted her stepmother ‘piggybacked’ off the fact that the NBN had already said it would be servicing the area.
More than 10,000 scams were reported in Australia in 2023/24, according to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority’s annual review.
This is an 81 per cent increase from the year before.
More than $5.8 million dollars has been lost through 5,352 remote access scams between January and September this year, according to Scamwatch
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