A woman lost A$500.000 (£260.000) after a simple Google search.
The woman spoke about her experience to let the world know what she did wrong and emptied her bank account.
Australian-born Jo O'Brien initially said she was "devastated" after her divorce settlement worth half a million dollars disappeared before her eyes as it was stolen from her investment account.
How she lost her money
Jo sent her bank account details to a comparison website in May 2022, which was later revealed to be fake.
As the woman said: “I Googled 'best fixed term investment rates' and (the fake page) came up as one of the first links. It turned out that the comparison table that was created was by the fraudsters,” he told news.com.au.
The following day, the mother-of-two received three calls from men claiming to be from different financial services firms, who used the names of real employees and offered her "better" interest rates.
Her bank informed her about her money transfers
She checked the names they gave her on the official website, with the numbers on her phone even showing as being based in Sydney.
Within the next two weeks Jo's life would be turned upside down.
Nothing was suspected
Scammers sent her fake emails and forms, requiring her to fill them out before they would forward her to the "legal department". Jo noted that the process didn't seem rushed and she didn't immediately notice anything wrong.
Jo was then given details of a NAB (National Australia Bank) account, which the fraudsters claimed was in her name and linked to her local branch in Melbourne. However, the money he transferred was actually sent to a company's bank account before being moved offshore.
"They said, 'Here's the account number when you're ready to make the first transfer,'" Jo recounted. "It wasn't rushed, it didn't look suspicious or anything like that."
The message from her bank
In June 2022, Jo received a text from her bank urging her to call them immediately. The bank suspected that he might have been a victim of fraud. Jo described the moment she realized what had happened: “I was driving and I stopped on a side street. I couldn't speak. It was basically almost all the money I had."
So far no one has been arrested and apparently the culprits will be difficult to find.
Jo feels frustrated by her bank, which allowed five separate transactions totaling $500.000 to be transferred over a two-week period.
Source: in.gr
