Gooday, Just thought I would share a bad experience with fellow Members we have just concluded .
During the last week of September we got Scammed. We had a substantial amount of Money that became due for renewal in a Term Deposit with a well known Finance Company/Institution.
I say that, as for many years now the "Old TERM of BANK", which we had all become to know as a True Pillar of Society no longer lives, in my opinion, they are, and have become Companies or Institutions, 'BANKS' are restricted to The Sides of Rivers or Streams.
However, the Interest rate for renewal was pretty poor, so I quickly Googled, looking for a better rate, did not, from recollection get very far as I was interrupted, think I may have had a quick look at ING, and left it there.
The next morning I received an unsolicited Phone call on my Mobile from a Bloke who introduced himself, his name was Rory as being from ING, offering a 4% interest rate with future increases as they come from the Reserve Bank as has been happening. He subsequently sent me, (electronically all the information on an ING Website, (which I later on found to have been copied and pasted), and said a follow up call would be received from another staff member to explain the set up and provide the necessary forms to be filled in.
This happened the next day, and as the deposit had about a week before it was available, it was several days before I completed the documentation and returned it all, did the Transfer of the $ to their nominated BSB and Account Number, purportedly to be ING. on or about 30th September. This was all followed the next day by Email confirmation of the funds being received and a website etc., to log into and see the $ grow.
Two days later I had a missed call on my Mobile from OUR Finance Company, which I had transferred the money from, noticed the missed call and short voice message later that afternoon, requesting me to contact them. I tried to phone them back on the only available Phone Number, a Bloody 1300 number we have to use, spent some 15 minutes + on hold, before I had to hang up and attend to something else that came up.
I was consequently phoned by the Finance Company again at just after 4-00 PM the following day to be advised that our Money had not gone to ING, but into an un-named SCAM at another Finance Company. There was no guarantee that our money would be retrieved and it could take Weeks, or even Months, to get a result whether our money was lost or may be recovered, as the other Finance Company was not being very cooperative.
I was given the Websites for ACCC and ID Care, (Identity Care, unknown to me previously) and suggested we report the Scan to them, which I did immediately, and advised the Finance Company of doing so. Some 2 weeks + later on 17th October we received the following reply from our FINANCE COMPANY-:Thank you for your email, really appreciate you have reported the scam to ASIC and I.D. Care. We are still waiting for the other financial institution WHO RECEIVED YOUR MONEY, to provide us with a recovery outcome, once we know more information we will get in contact with you, thank you for your overall patience regarding this scam case. Despite a couple of more Emails from us, our Finance company remained silent.
So, as this said Finance Company had their Annual General Meeting in Brisbane last Tuesday 6th December, and us being longtime shareholders, we decided to attend that Meeting and make representations to somebody near the top of their Tree.
This we did, and after the formalities and the Meeting werecompleted we approached the Chairman of the Board, who is also currently the Acting CEO, and received a very positivehearing. He promised he would have a Senior member of Staff contact us the next day, which they did, and assured us he would investigate the matter closely and get back to us with in 48 hours with an update.
He was as good as his word, The State Customer Services Manager Phoned about 10-30 am Wednesday morning and asked some more details and said he would update us further the next day.
Around 2-00PM this Thursday, he phoned to advise us they had recovered our Money in Total, and it would be deposited in OUR Account again within 48 hours. The BEST Christmas Gift we could have asked for, How Lucky, could we be. We were heading to Sydney by plane later that afternoon, where we are until this Sunday afternoon, when we return home to Toowoomba. Seems we were not the only ones caught up in this Scam, he told us there were a number of other people scammed as well, that is as much as we know.
What I ask EVERY Member of this Forum to do is!!!!.-:
Before They Transfer Any Decent Sum of Money on the Internet, to telephone the Payee of that money, to verify the legitimacy of that Payee, by contacting such Recipient from a source, other than the one that may be on the screen or the invoice etc., and whom you are making the payment to, is it really who you think that the person or company is ???, before you click ENTER, to complete your Transaction.
This Gentleman from our Finance Company has asked Anita and Myself to meet with him in the new year to discuss our experiences and other problems that our Slowly Maturing Age Group are encountering with the proliferation of Electronic Demands being Forced upon us, or, (Dehumanisation of Society as I prefer to refer to it as,) and are impacting our lives.
If anybody has any Ideas/Input etc., they wish to put forward we would be happy to receive such for consideration and possible inclusion.
We refuse to use Self Serve Checkouts for instance, we consider we are not Employees of the Businesses that are using them, it only displaces Staff who otherwise had a job there.
I apologise for the length of this, but feel it is vital, with the scope of SCAMS and FRAUD being committed on us all, WITH THIS WONDERFUL TECHNOlOGY BEING FORCED UPON US AND INCREASING EVERY DAY, AND THE CORPORATIONS NOT KEEPING AHEAD TO PROTECT US FROM BEING ROBBED. Any suggestions or ideas please send to--: mailfrommars@...
Cheers,
Thomas Jacobsen.
dorian said
12:27 PM Dec 11, 2022
Thanks for the warning. Sorry to hear about your troubles, but glad it all worked out in the end.
Bicyclecamper said
12:37 PM Dec 11, 2022
Which is why I wont use technology today to do any banking period. I go to the bank personally, and also pay my bills personally at the premises of said companies. But it is causing me issues, as do gooders, think I am incompetent managing my affairs. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Whenarewethere said
01:56 PM Dec 11, 2022
Bicyclecamper wrote:
I go to the bank personally, and also pay my bills personally at the premises of said companies.
Likewise I only deal with people in physical form, & still mostly use cash. Still surprising the discounts you get these days.
Bloody inconvenient loosing a deposit on a property, or worse, a settlement!
Mike Harding said
02:19 PM Dec 11, 2022
I am confused by this post: is blissonwheels Thomas Jacobsen or is this simply some internet post that blissonwheels is reposting?
I do not understand where or what the "scam" is. TJ willingly transferred money to a company which may, or may not, have been ING - an established Australian business.
His previous company (PC) then contacted him to inform it was not ING but a scammer although they provided no evidence, not to mention they permitted a transfer to an account they knew to be a scam.
He asked his PC to get his money back, they agreed but pratted around.
However once TJ gave them "a good talking to" they got his cash back immediately.
----
I am not aware of scams where the perpetrator gives back the cash - that's rather the point is it not?
How does TJ know it wasn't ING? May his PC were trying to scare him into staying with them?
Frankly the whole thing sounds like a rather poor Year 10 Creative Writing assignment to me.
dogbox said
04:01 PM Dec 11, 2022
i had the email from NRMA to say that i was due a refund , an could i supply some banking details so they could transfer the funds . i thought looked very official and had to be a scam
i rang NRMA "NOT" on the number supplied in the email an they said it was legit !!
i thought for sure it was a scam, they seem to be setting us up to be scammed as maybe next time it might be a scammer using the same format
Are We Lost said
05:48 PM Dec 11, 2022
Mike Harding wrote:.............
His previous company ..........permitted a transfer to an account they knew to be a scam.
......
The Australian banking interchange does not validate payee names, so they would not have known ......at the time. I think many people would see fixing this loophole would be a major help in reducing such fraud.
Presumably the original company became aware of the scam when others fell for it and reported it, leading them to call the OP 2 days later. Perhaps the recipient account had already been frozen, accounting for the ability to recover the funds.
But very disappointing that it took senior executive intervention to get it moving.
BasilB said
06:09 PM Dec 11, 2022
i would say, before you transfer any money first open an account . cheers
gold dandelion said
10:40 PM Dec 11, 2022
Really, not sure what to think here. Gullible people are why scammers are about. I can't get a handle on this one.
cjt55 said
07:40 AM Dec 12, 2022
I NEVER answer a call from an unknown number. I have voice recording saying "leave me a message and I will call you back "as soon as possible". 95% of the time there is no message left. As for texts etc NEVER click on a "link" and the same with emails. If I am expecting something then YES but otherwise I don't touch them. So .... so far so good as I have not had a problem. Oh ... also on Facebook I NEVER share a post from anyone. Again don't have problems of being hacked.
deverall11 said
08:15 AM Dec 12, 2022
gold dandelion wrote:
Really, not sure what to think here. Gullible people are why scammers are about. I can't get a handle on this one.
Gullible people is what makes the world go around. Also greed is a pitfall scammers use.
Not saying this was the case but too many fall for the old 'if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't.'
Ivan 01 said
10:30 AM Dec 12, 2022
There would be very few reputable financial companies that have not had their web sites *mirrored* by scammers.
They are generally easily identified simply by checking the email address of any of the fake sites.
The advice of do not click on a link is common and I am surprised that people are still being caught by these people.
To communicate or have any dealings with a site ensure that you are opening the genuine site.
If any doubt then dont use that site. Phone the company or go in to the bricks and mortar address.
Getting back to fake websites, I find it hard to believe that our governments can not have these sites easily removed or isolated once they are reported as phishing/scam sites.
For a moment imagine if someone opened a caravan park with a big and supposedly impenetrable fence around it whereby the only people were allowed in were those who are known criminals or those that are wanted for breaches of the law. Once inside those people are unable to be apprehended.
Would we as a government a state or a country tolerate this?
I doubt it very much so when a site is reported as dodgy why is the IP and the carrier still permitted to have that site available to all in our country.
All the companies that host email sites could be made to comply by removing immediately any site which is reported and proved to be dodgy.
It surely can not be that difficult.
When using a computer for anything other than social media or offline projects the rule of thumb is *trust nothing* and then work from there.
When answering a phone call the same applies.
Woah! Hang on there is a knock on my door and the really good looking girl wants to sell me a bottle of snake oil.
Sorry, I gotta go.
I have to go and find my wallet.
StewG said
05:39 PM Dec 12, 2022
It really doesn't matter about the detail of the OP, the key message is to always make doubly sure that when you are transferring money that it is going to the person or organisation that is intended to receive it. Scammers will keep evolving new ways of stealing from us and unfortunately we all have to be alert and verify important details; never assume that "it'll be right". We can expect an increase in scam attempts (I get 2 or 3 per day at present) particularly since the Optus and Medibank data thefts. I've already received SMS and email scams stemming from Optus data. The email was very professional-looking except for the sender's email address from a nondescript NZ address that gave the game away!
Mein said
10:57 PM Dec 12, 2022
I have two 'transaction' bank accounts. I also have a so-called high interest savings account and a term deposit but they aren't relative to this message.
Both transaction accounts have a Mastercard debit card attached.
For transaction account A, I keep a balance of around $10,000 so that I have a reasonable amount of funds immediately available in the event of an emergency.
Centrelink is the only third party that has a record of the account number and BSB of transaction account A.
For transaction account B, I keep a balance of ZERO.
Whenever I need to make an online payment, e.g. my monthly phone bill, my monthly insurance installment, Netflix, purchases on Ebay and more, I use the Mastercard debit card attached to transaction account B.
Mere minutes prior to making an online payment, I transfer the amount to be paid from transaction account A to transaction account B. Such transfers are immediate - the funds are available immediately.
Furthermore, when someone needs to pay me money (including my employer when I was working), I provide the account number and BSB of transaction account B and upon receipt of the funds, I transfer them to transaction account A.
As I said, apart from Centrelink, no one knows about and no one can access transaction account A.
If. somehow, scammers managed to con me (maybe an Ebay purchase?), it would be mere peanuts.
For me, doing online transfers from account A to account B (to make an online payment) is no trouble at all and takes only 2 - 3 minutes.
Finally, my bank allows me to rename accounts so account A is called Main Account and account B is called Online Payments; I haven't yet confused the 2 accounts.
Are We Lost said
12:20 AM Dec 13, 2022
The problem with that solution, and in fact virtually any solution is that if you fall for a scam you make the decision to send the payment. In your case you would choose to transfer sufficient funds from A to B and then make the payment. Of course, no readers on this forum would be likely to fall for a scam would they?
In fact I believe you would be safer having Centrlink make the payments into B. That way you would need to access account A much less frequently. If your PC or network is hacked, there is therefore less chance of the transaction being tracked.
Mike Harding said
07:46 AM Dec 13, 2022
Due to sheer laziness until recently I had a large bucket of money sitting in an on-line account but the Optus/Medibank hack gave me a kick up the bottom to change it.
My bank (one of the big four) provides the facility to have an account which does not permit on-line transactions so in my on-line account I put $15k which is about my annual spend and the balance I transferred into the off-line account.
When I log on to internet banking (which I do via a Linux computer) I can do as I wish with the on-line account but I am only permitted to view the balance of the off-line account. The downside is that the only way to access the off-line account is to go into a branch but as I'll only need to do that once a year it's not a big issue. So if I am hacked the maximum I'm up for is $15k (on average $7.5k) which is bloody annoying but not the end of the world.
I also keep a few $k in cash hidden away for major emergencies.
Mike Harding said
07:52 AM Dec 13, 2022
A follow on:
Using Linux for internet banking probably cuts the chances of being hacked down to 2%? of what it would be under Windows so this action alone makes you many times safer.
You don't have to change your computer or install Linux instead of Windows you can simply run a "virtual machine" on your Windows computer and install Linux in that. Then each time you wish to do internet banking simply fire up the Linux system and use your favourite web browser under that - takes about one minute on a modern computer.
Gooday,
Gooday,
Just thought I would share a bad experience with fellow Members we have just concluded .
During the last week of September we got Scammed.
We had a substantial amount of Money that became due for renewal in a Term Deposit with a well known Finance Company/Institution.
I say that, as for many years now the "Old TERM of BANK", which we had all become to know as a True Pillar of Society no longer lives, in my opinion, they are, and have become Companies or Institutions, 'BANKS' are restricted to The Sides of Rivers or Streams.
However, the Interest rate for renewal was pretty poor, so I quickly Googled, looking for a better rate, did not, from recollection get very far as I was interrupted, think I may have had a quick look at ING, and left it there.
The next morning I received an unsolicited Phone call on my Mobile from a Bloke who introduced himself, his name was Rory as being from ING, offering a 4% interest rate with future increases as they come from the Reserve Bank as has been happening.
He subsequently sent me, (electronically all the information on an ING Website, (which I later on found to have been copied and pasted), and said a follow up call would be received from another staff member to explain the set up and provide the necessary forms to be filled in.
This happened the next day, and as the deposit had about a week before it was available, it was several days before I completed the documentation and returned it all, did the Transfer of the $ to their nominated BSB and Account Number, purportedly to be ING. on or about 30th September.
This was all followed the next day by Email confirmation of the funds being received and a website etc., to log into and see the $ grow.
Two days later I had a missed call on my Mobile from OUR Finance Company, which I had transferred the money from, noticed the missed call and short voice message later that afternoon, requesting me to contact them. I tried to phone them back on the only available Phone Number, a Bloody 1300 number we have to use, spent some 15 minutes + on hold, before I had to hang up and attend to something else that came up.
I was consequently phoned by the Finance Company again at just after 4-00 PM the following day to be advised that our Money had not gone to ING, but into an un-named SCAM at another Finance Company. There was no guarantee that our money would be retrieved and it could take Weeks, or even Months, to get a result whether our money was lost or may be recovered, as the other Finance Company was not being very cooperative.
I was given the Websites for ACCC and ID Care, (Identity Care, unknown to me previously) and suggested we report the Scan to them, which I did immediately, and advised the Finance Company of doing so.
Some 2 weeks + later on 17th October we received the following reply from our FINANCE COMPANY-: Thank you for your email, really appreciate you have reported the scam to ASIC and I.D. Care.
We are still waiting for the other financial institution WHO RECEIVED YOUR MONEY, to provide us with a recovery outcome, once we know more information we will get in contact with you, thank you for your overall patience regarding this scam case.
Despite a couple of more Emails from us, our Finance company remained silent.
So, as this said Finance Company had their Annual General Meeting in Brisbane last Tuesday 6th December, and us being longtime shareholders, we decided to attend that Meeting and make representations to somebody near the top of their Tree.
This we did, and after the formalities and the Meeting were completed we approached the Chairman of the Board, who is also currently the Acting CEO, and received a very positive hearing.
He promised he would have a Senior member of Staff contact us the next day, which they did, and assured us he would investigate the matter closely and get back to us with in 48 hours with an update.
He was as good as his word, The State Customer Services Manager Phoned about 10-30 am Wednesday morning and asked some more details and said he would update us further the next day.
Around 2-00PM this Thursday, he phoned to advise us they had recovered our Money in Total, and it would be deposited in OUR Account again within 48 hours. The BEST Christmas Gift we could have asked for, How Lucky, could we be. We were heading to Sydney by plane later that afternoon, where we are until this Sunday afternoon, when we return home to Toowoomba.
Seems we were not the only ones caught up in this Scam, he told us there were a number of other people scammed as well, that is as much as we know.
What I ask EVERY Member of this Forum to do is!!!!.-:
Before They Transfer Any Decent Sum of Money on the Internet, to telephone the Payee of that money, to verify the legitimacy of that Payee, by contacting such Recipient from a source, other than the one that may be on the screen or the invoice etc., and whom you are making the payment to, is it really who you think that the person or company is ???, before you click ENTER, to complete your Transaction.
This Gentleman from our Finance Company has asked Anita and Myself to meet with him in the new year to discuss our experiences and other problems that our Slowly Maturing Age Group are encountering with the proliferation of Electronic Demands being Forced upon us, or, (Dehumanisation of Society as I prefer to refer to it as,) and are impacting our lives.
If anybody has any Ideas/Input etc., they wish to put forward we would be happy to receive such for consideration and possible inclusion.
We refuse to use Self Serve Checkouts for instance, we consider we are not Employees of the Businesses that are using them, it only displaces Staff who otherwise had a job there.
I apologise for the length of this, but feel it is vital, with the scope of SCAMS and FRAUD being committed on us all, WITH THIS WONDERFUL TECHNOlOGY BEING FORCED UPON US AND INCREASING EVERY DAY, AND THE CORPORATIONS NOT KEEPING AHEAD TO PROTECT US FROM BEING ROBBED.
Any suggestions or ideas please send to--: mailfrommars@...
Cheers,
Thomas Jacobsen.
Likewise I only deal with people in physical form, & still mostly use cash. Still surprising the discounts you get these days.
Bloody inconvenient loosing a deposit on a property, or worse, a settlement!
I am confused by this post: is blissonwheels Thomas Jacobsen or is this simply some internet post that blissonwheels is reposting?
I do not understand where or what the "scam" is. TJ willingly transferred money to a company which may, or may not, have been ING - an established Australian business.
His previous company (PC) then contacted him to inform it was not ING but a scammer although they provided no evidence, not to mention they permitted a transfer to an account they knew to be a scam.
He asked his PC to get his money back, they agreed but pratted around.
However once TJ gave them "a good talking to" they got his cash back immediately.
----
I am not aware of scams where the perpetrator gives back the cash - that's rather the point is it not?
How does TJ know it wasn't ING? May his PC were trying to scare him into staying with them?
Frankly the whole thing sounds like a rather poor Year 10 Creative Writing assignment to me.
i rang NRMA "NOT" on the number supplied in the email an they said it was legit !!
i thought for sure it was a scam, they seem to be setting us up to be scammed as maybe next time it might be a scammer using the same format
The Australian banking interchange does not validate payee names, so they would not have known ......at the time. I think many people would see fixing this loophole would be a major help in reducing such fraud.
Presumably the original company became aware of the scam when others fell for it and reported it, leading them to call the OP 2 days later. Perhaps the recipient account had already been frozen, accounting for the ability to recover the funds.
But very disappointing that it took senior executive intervention to get it moving.
i would say, before you transfer any money first open an account . cheers
Gullible people is what makes the world go around. Also greed is a pitfall scammers use.
Not saying this was the case but too many fall for the old 'if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't.'
They are generally easily identified simply by checking the email address of any of the fake sites.
The advice of do not click on a link is common and I am surprised that people are still being caught by these people.
To communicate or have any dealings with a site ensure that you are opening the genuine site.
If any doubt then dont use that site. Phone the company or go in to the bricks and mortar address.
Getting back to fake websites, I find it hard to believe that our governments can not have these sites easily removed or isolated once they are reported as phishing/scam sites.
For a moment imagine if someone opened a caravan park with a big and supposedly impenetrable fence around it whereby the only people were allowed in were those who are known criminals or those that are wanted for breaches of the law. Once inside those people are unable to be apprehended.
Would we as a government a state or a country tolerate this?
I doubt it very much so when a site is reported as dodgy why is the IP and the carrier still permitted to have that site available to all in our country.
All the companies that host email sites could be made to comply by removing immediately any site which is reported and proved to be dodgy.
It surely can not be that difficult.
When using a computer for anything other than social media or offline projects the rule of thumb is *trust nothing* and then work from there.
When answering a phone call the same applies.
Woah! Hang on there is a knock on my door and the really good looking girl wants to sell me a bottle of snake oil.
Sorry, I gotta go.
I have to go and find my wallet.
I have two 'transaction' bank accounts. I also have a so-called high interest savings account and a term deposit but they aren't relative to this message.
Both transaction accounts have a Mastercard debit card attached.
For transaction account A, I keep a balance of around $10,000 so that I have a reasonable amount of funds immediately available in the event of an emergency.
Centrelink is the only third party that has a record of the account number and BSB of transaction account A.
For transaction account B, I keep a balance of ZERO.
Whenever I need to make an online payment, e.g. my monthly phone bill, my monthly insurance installment, Netflix, purchases on Ebay and more, I use the Mastercard debit card attached to transaction account B.
Mere minutes prior to making an online payment, I transfer the amount to be paid from transaction account A to transaction account B. Such transfers are immediate - the funds are available immediately.
Furthermore, when someone needs to pay me money (including my employer when I was working), I provide the account number and BSB of transaction account B and upon receipt of the funds, I transfer them to transaction account A.
As I said, apart from Centrelink, no one knows about and no one can access transaction account A.
If. somehow, scammers managed to con me (maybe an Ebay purchase?), it would be mere peanuts.
For me, doing online transfers from account A to account B (to make an online payment) is no trouble at all and takes only 2 - 3 minutes.
Finally, my bank allows me to rename accounts so account A is called Main Account and account B is called Online Payments; I haven't yet confused the 2 accounts.
In fact I believe you would be safer having Centrlink make the payments into B. That way you would need to access account A much less frequently. If your PC or network is hacked, there is therefore less chance of the transaction being tracked.
Due to sheer laziness until recently I had a large bucket of money sitting in an on-line account but the Optus/Medibank hack gave me a kick up the bottom to change it.
My bank (one of the big four) provides the facility to have an account which does not permit on-line transactions so in my on-line account I put $15k which is about my annual spend and the balance I transferred into the off-line account.
When I log on to internet banking (which I do via a Linux computer) I can do as I wish with the on-line account but I am only permitted to view the balance of the off-line account. The downside is that the only way to access the off-line account is to go into a branch but as I'll only need to do that once a year it's not a big issue. So if I am hacked the maximum I'm up for is $15k (on average $7.5k) which is bloody annoying but not the end of the world.
I also keep a few $k in cash hidden away for major emergencies.
A follow on:
Using Linux for internet banking probably cuts the chances of being hacked down to 2%? of what it would be under Windows so this action alone makes you many times safer.
You don't have to change your computer or install Linux instead of Windows you can simply run a "virtual machine" on your Windows computer and install Linux in that. Then each time you wish to do internet banking simply fire up the Linux system and use your favourite web browser under that - takes about one minute on a modern computer.