Georgina was on her way to pick up a $40,000 Mercedes AMG A35 when she got the worst phone call of her life – and 18 months later NO ONE understands what happened

A young real estate executive has fallen victim to an elaborate scam so sophisticated that no one can figure out how it really happened.

Georgina Smith, 25, paid a $38,500 deposit for a new Mercedes-Benz AMG A35 at the brand’s dealership in Berwick, in Melbourne’s southeast, and was on her way to pick up the luxury car in June 2022 when one phone call changed everything.

The dealer said she had not received her payment and when Ms Smith checked her emails she discovered a second invoice had also been sent for the deposit.

The invoices were identical from top to bottom, with the bank’s name on them: Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific Pty Ltd.

But the 14 digits at the bottom of the document showing the BSB and the account number were different.

Ms Smith had fallen victim to a ‘payment diversion fraud’, where heartless fraudsters intercepted a legitimate invoice and changed the bank details before sending it to their target.

Ms Smith admitted she had been lulled into a false sense of security after buying a car from the same dealer the year before.

“The bill was the same, I was dealing with the same people at Mercedes, so everything seemed to be going the same way as the year before,” she said 7News.

After discussing the matter with Mercedes, Ms. Smith claims the company told her the invoice had not been intercepted on their end and that it must have been her email that had been hacked.

She had purchased the vehicle through her real estate company, Wilson Partners, and said that if her work email address had been compromised, other invoices would also have been affected by the scammers.

“I (trade) with large transactions every day, if a hacker were to wait and intercept my emails, my clients would be missing out on money and that is not the case,” she said.

Ms. Smith even went to the trouble of hiring an independent IT team to see if her company’s servers had been hacked in a cyberattack, but nothing was found.

Despite contacting her bank, insurance company and Mercedes-Benz, Ms Smith was unable to get the deposit back.

She ended up paying $91,000 to get the car and end the painful chapter in her life.

“It’s taken a bit of a toll financially and mentally,” Ms Smith said.

She said she would never buy another car from the luxury car brand and urged Mercedes-Benz to admit their system had been ‘compromised’.

‘I think their internal procedures need to be adjusted to prevent this from happening to more people. Obviously it’s something on their part,” Ms Smith said.

Ms Smith paid a down payment for a Mercedes-Benz AMG A35 (pictured) in May 2022.

Instead of taking the car, Ms Smith was shocked to discover she had sent her deposit to a scammer’s bank account after the invoice was intercepted and the bank details had been changed.

A Mercedes-Benz spokesperson said the company “takes cybersecurity and data protection very seriously.”

“Unfortunately, the issue of invoice fraud is not unique to our brand or industry,” the spokesperson told 7News.

‘It is a risk when financial information is exchanged online. To limit this risk, we are continuously developing security measures to make online payments more secure.

‘We also urge our customers to be vigilant in ensuring that any email or invoice purporting to be from a retailer is legitimate by calling the retailer to confirm it is genuine and that all account details are correct are.’

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mercedes-Benz for comment.

There were 981 cases of payment diversion scams reported to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) between January 1 and September 30 this year.

The scam has cost Aussies about $13 million this year, compared to last year’s total of $23.2 million.

The ACCC said the scam could affect anyone from a property boss buying a car to a farmer trying to get a good deal on a tractor.

Ms Smith (pictured) said she was unable to recoup the money she lost and after a back-and-forth with the luxury brand company, she spent a total of around $91,000 to put the situation behind her.