Scam stories

I'm Joyce, I'm a physiotherapist and a mum of two young kids.

I knew a lot of people got scammed, but I didn't think it would actually happen to me.

So I was very trusting and I would go and purchase things online and over the phone thinking that other people would do the right thing.

I was looking on Facebook Marketplace for a games console for my kids.

After I told the seller I was interested in his console, he said he was happy to deliver the product if I would pay the full amount upfront via PayID.

I wasn't comfortable paying the full amount, so I offered him 20%, and as soon as I did my transaction over PayID, he sent me a picture of him going to the petrol station where he filled up petrol and kept me notified that he was on the way.

He arrived at my house or so he said he had arrived, but I had my lights on, I was waiting outside and I told him, "You're not here. What's going on?"

And after five minutes of him telling me that he was there and waiting for me and that he had left, he kind of let the calls run out and then he turned off his phone.

I realised that I had been scammed.

I felt very manipulated, and I was being so grateful and so thankful that he was doing this.

I was being so nice about it, and he was just taking advantage of me.

I felt like my privacy was invaded.

They knew my phone number, they knew my address.

Now this stranger has my details and I felt if I pushed for something, you know, there's consequences.

He could just come to my house to threaten me anytime.

Since the scam happened to me, I don't buy from sellers unless they have like four or five stars in their profile.

I don't fork out any money unless I have the product in my hands and I've inspected it.

I think there's lots of value in sharing the story if you're scammed because it happens a lot of the time.

So if people are aware, they can actually make better, wiser decisions when purchasing.

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I am Sylvie Leber. I paint, I play music, I write.

Before I was scammed, I felt that I was one of the lucky ones, and I really felt for the people who were losing large sums of their money.

I received a phone call saying, "This is the NBN and we're doing an upgrade in your area."

They said, "We're gonna have one of our NBN technicians come to the house this week. They'll come out on Wednesday, what time suits you?"

I was asked to get onto my computer, and to upload this app called AnyDesk.

The scammers accessed all my information using this AnyDesk app.

About an hour or so after this phone call,

I checked my bank account and I was horrified.

The scammers took pretty much everything out of my savings account, which was $20,000.

I was in shock, I was horrified.

I couldn't believe that it had happened to me.

I felt like a complete mess for quite a while afterwards, I felt shame.

I felt loss of confidence.

I had a couple of appointments to see a psychologist to help me cope with it all.

I've been really lucky in that my daughter's been a fantastic support from the very beginning.

My daughter had a friend who worked in cybersecurity.

They came over and changing all my passwords and going through all my

security issues on my devices, and fixing them up.

To have all this support made a huge difference.

I hope by telling my story that others will learn from what happened to me, and it won't happen to them.

You know, the more aware we become of how the scammers operate, the less likely we are to be scammed.

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I'm Rod Quantock, and for 50 years, I've been a comedian.

Well, before I was scammed, I was very familiar with the concept of scamming.

I sort of prided myself on the fact that if anybody tried to scam me, I'd be onto them like a shot.

I got a phone call from somebody saying, "We are from the bank."

Very nice man with a very nice voice.

He began by saying, "Look, your account's been compromised and what we're going to do is, we're going to shift money out of your account so the scammers can't get to it."

He gave me an account number to move out some money.

The call finished and he said, "Thank you, the money's been successfully moved."

Before he hung up, he said, "What time zone are you in?"

And that's when the penny dropped.

And I realised that I'd lost quite a lot of money.

The money that was taken, it was part of a money that we'd set aside to build an independent living unit for a child that we have with a disability.

I rang the bank in Sydney that had taken the money and said, "Well, can you stop it?"

And they said, "Well, no, we can't violate the privacy of our customers."

So I was lucky in that I'd led a life that had introduced me to people who could help me and my wife. She got onto a friend of ours who's a journalist.

The bank rang us, and the money was back in my account.

As a result of the scam, I, look, I sort of doubled down a bit on being vigilant.

So, I double and triple-check everything that comes across my threshold that has anything to do with my money.

I can't stress too strongly, that you need to know that other people have been through this and you, if you've been through it, need to tell other people it happened to you.

In sharing your story, you've made a contribution to stopping scams in the future.

[End of transcript.]

Now I’m $180,000 out of pocket, which has just made life very difficult and I’m on Centrelink as well.

So it was an offer for a job, effectively an online app optimisation job.

Where you complete a number of tasks per day, and once you’ve completed five days worth of app optimisation tasks, you get paid $800 U.S.

But in order for you to start working with the scheme, you had to put in $100 U.S. dollars, which I thought was, you know, fairly reasonable at the time.

But the way the system is designed means that you get complex tasks and you get normal tasks.

The normal tasks, you might get a dollar per task as commission.

The complex tasks require you to actually put in funds.

So I could take money out the first few times.

However, it’s scaled up so effectively I was spending $800 on the tasks themselves, which then scaled up and got more and more expensive and complicated.

And I thought, well, if I can, you know, just finish it off, then I can withdraw all the funds because that was what was the agreement ended up costing me over $180,000 to try and withdraw the funds.

And then I still couldn’t complete the task because they wanted another $300,000 in order for me to withdraw the money that I put in.

I had a suspicion, probably from the beginning I was thinking, all this sounds a bit too good to be true.

But it really was my friend from Microsoft did a background check on the company that I was working with, and he came back and said, “Oh there’s a lot of red flags with these guys.”

And that was when I was like, well, maybe this is a scam.

And that was three and a half months into the process.

He said, any company that asks you to put in money to employ you should be seen as a red flag.

So, that message needs to go out really clearly that if companies are asking you to put in cash to do a job, then it’s probably not going to be legit.

I think if it sounds too good to be true, and it is, and if you get random job offers and messages from WhatsApp or from different countries etc., that, you know, that’s pretty dangerous.

Yeah, I’d be really mindful of doing anything that way.

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My dad is in his late 70s.

He’s worked hard throughout his life to have a comfortable retirement and to have provided for his family.

My father indicated to me that he had an investment opportunity in cryptocurrency.

Dad is somebody who has always like to try and stay up to date with, what he refers to as, modern technology.

He thought that the opportunity was, valid or, I guess, you know, endorsed because it came from a website that was linked to his bank.

He proceeded to invest a smallish amount and I could see via an app on his phone that he was having payments back.

So the investment was having returns. Then he approached me and let me know that the investment company had offered another opportunity, which involved a much larger sum of money, and he was indecisive about, taking up that opportunity and that’s when I guess I started to look into it more for him.

I ended up staying away, ‘til all hours of the morning looking through all the information that had been provided.

I had some real concerns that it was not above board, that, you know, potentially that this was a scam.

We tried to do a couple of things, to alleviate my concerns.

We arranged a few meetings with the company and they were always cancelled.

My dad chose to go ahead with that investment.

And what we later found out was that it was a scam.

There was no, there would never be any returns.

He has never shared with me that, the total amount. At least $50,000 to $100,000.

The amount that he invested, I guess, was his accessible income, you know, wasn’t tied up in, you know, property ownership or superannuation.

So to have to think about, “Do I have money for these particular groceries?” “I can’t afford to do this”. That was a very big change for him.

You know, he’d had this experience that he’s, he’s not a fool.

So, it very much doubted that he would be fooled again.

The recent incident, I became aware through my son.

He texted me.

“They’re trying to get him to send them something big in the mail.”

His email address was incorrect. His phone number was incorrect. The com’ note for package said ‘bill sender’.

The package was to be sent overseas so we know how much postage costs. I think I used the words I’m going to put the handbrakes on here.

If this is shoes and watches or whatever it is that this list says, there is nothing so urgent that it can’t wait for me to really have a look at what’s going on here, because I’m quite worried about you sending unknown things that you don’t know what it is.

Being financially responsible for the cost of that.

This is not making sense.

My curiosity got the better of me and I actually contacted the delivery company, the courier company, and asked them, to check whether the postage had been paid for.

And I was advised that it had been booked.

I gave them the tracking number.

They let me know it had been booked through a third party from an overseas-based company, and they had sent the invoice off to be paid.

If that wasn’t paid by the company, then my dad would be responsible for the cost of the package.

So I contacted Police Link and then contacted our local station.

We had police officers attend dad’s home and they listened.

They really listened to what was going on and they pretty quickly identified that they suspected that there had been an attempt to use dad as a parcel mule and potentially a money mule.

[End of transcript.]

I'm Doctor Kate Gould. I'm a scam researcher and a clinical neuropsychologist.

I think sharing a scam story is really important to show people that they're not alone, that this is a very common problem, and that there's nothing to be ashamed of.

We can also learn things every time we hear about someone's scam story.

[End of transcript.]

I'm Doctor Kate Gould. I'm a scam researcher and a clinical neuropsychologist.

If you think you've been scammed, the most important thing is to stop what you are doing.

Don't click another link or engage further by sending money.

Check with someone you trust and report the scam to Scamwatch.

[End of transcript.]

I'm Doctor Kate Gould. I'm a scam researcher and a clinical neuropsychologist.

If someone tells you that they have been scammed, that is really somebody saying that they deeply trust you with something very difficult that they've gone through.

So it's important to be non-judgmental, not to blame them, and to be open and curious with what they've gone through and offer practical and emotional support.

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