An Australian woman who lost over $250,000 to a sophisticated scam using David Koch’s face to lure victims has confronted the man who allegedly orchestrated the fraud, labelling him ‘scum’.
Alison Smyth, from Adelaide, admitted that she thought about ending her life after shameless fraudsters took advantage of her desire to make more money so she could move her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, into a nursing home.
She stumbled across a link on social media using former Sunrise host David ‘Kochie’ Koch’s face to promote a cryptocurrency investment platform.
Ms Smyth claimed she was groomed and encouraged to make investments, only realising it was a scam after she had been cleared of her life savings.
She’s among more than 600,000 Aussies who have lost a combined $2.7b in the last year.
‘I was totally mortified and I thought of suicide,’ she told Channel Seven’s Spotlight.
Alison Smyth (pictured), from Adelaide, thought about ending her life after alleged fraudsters took advantage of her desire to make more money so she could move her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, into a nursing home
The Port Adelaide AFL die-hard fan got a small form of justice after the program tracked down the man accused of being in charge of the alleged fraud to a grimy office block in Cebu in Philippines.
‘You’re scum mate, absolute scum,’ an angry Ms Smyth told the man through Facetime, who remained silent and refused to make eye contact.
‘You are scum of the earth. You deserve to rot, mate.
‘I see your face. I see you!’
Journalist Liam Bartlett asked the alleged fraudster if he would like to apologise.
You really are pathetic mate, honestly!’ he told the man.
‘A simple sorry and you can’t even manage that.’
Ms Smyth wanted the alleged fraudsters who allegedly ripped her off behind bars.
‘I want to see the people arrested, to see them zip-tied and on the ground,’ she said.
‘I want to see them treated like the scum they are, put in the dirt, face down.
‘And I would like to get my money back.’
However, the program revealed that the alleged criminal mastermind fled the country while on bail.
Alison Smyth got a chance to confront the man accused of being behind the alleged scam which saw her lose $250,000
Mr Smyth revealed she was initially tricked by the use of David ‘Kochie’ Koch’s face on a social media advert.
‘There was a picture of David Koch with ‘see what Kochie’s doing with his Bitcoin’,’ Ms Smyth told the program.
‘I thought ‘Oh, I wonder what he’s up to’. He’s our chairman of the football AFL team I follow, and that’s when it all started.’
Ms Smyth claimed she was phoned by a man called ‘Ben’ with an English accent who slowly built a relationship with her over weeks and months.
‘He said ‘You can put money into this scheme and we will teach you to trade currencies. We will help you to make money’,’ Ms Smyth said.
Koch described the scams were ‘devastating’ and that he was powerless to stop his image being used.
‘People who trust me and trust what I say and look at me and say ‘wow, I’m getting some comfort out of what this bloke is saying’, are then getting ripped off by some scammer from overseas,’ the business journalist said.
‘It’s devastating because it’s my reputation and these scams are so good.’
He called on tech companies like Meta which owns Facebook and Instagram, to do more to tackle the scams on their platforms.
The program also heard from an elderly woman who had been fleeced of $800,000 – her entire life savings.
Johanna Robinson, a devout Christian who lives on the Gold Coast, saw an advert on YouTube about an investment platform.
The program also heard from an elderly woman called Johanna Robinson (pictured) who had been fleeced of $800,000 – her entire life’s savings
She had recently sold her house and wanted to earn more money so she could buy a new home closer to her daughter Simmone.
Ms Robinson would see healthy returns deposited into her account at first but it was all a ruse to build her trust.
‘Just the way he spoke to me was so encouraging’ she said.
‘He then started questioning me about my beliefs and I shared a lot and talked a lot about God…and he was so interested in what my views were.’
The scammer pretended to be a Christian to further gain her trust.
The scammers were so convincing that Ms Robinson ignored the warning signs.
‘The banks were stopping me, blocking and questioning me, ‘Are you sure you’re not being scammed’ because the banks will not let you transfer in $25,000 lots a day,’ she recalled.
‘Westpac shut me down and were investigating as they thought I was money laundering.’
‘I was telling my granddaughter about the returns that I was getting and she said ‘that’s a scam, that’s a scam.’
‘I now wish I had listened to her.’
Ms Robinson now survives on solely on her pension.
Not only has she’s lost all of her life savings but she has also lost her identity because the scammers have also stolen all her personal details.
‘I’m going have to change my name, change my surname, change my identity,’ she said.
Cybercrime investigator Ken Gamble told the program that online fraudsters were ‘selling the dream’ to Australians that they could make money from their computer.
‘There’s real trading feeds getting fed into the website to make it look realistic but it’s fictitious,’ he said.
‘The whole thing is bogus. It’s a way of stealing money.’
Former Sunrise host David Koch called on social media companies to do more regarding online scams
Koch said that anyone could fall prey to one of their scammers.
‘People who haven’t been ripped off go ‘oh you’ve got to be a sucker to actually fall for one of those’,’ Koch said.
‘But you don’t need to be a sucker to fall for them. You can be a normal, intelligent person.’
Koch met Ms Smyth who he described as the ‘human face of these scams – the average Australian whose life is destroyed by these mongrels from overseas’.
He has covered Ms Smyth’s Port Adelaide club membership for life.
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