Uni student’s entire savings account is drained by a scammer while he served a customer at work: Here’s the alarmingly simple major bank scam Aussies need to be on alert about
A university student lost $12,000 he had saved for a student exchange trip to America within ten minutes after falling victim to an alarmingly simple scam.
Matthew Sweeney, 22, a criminology and criminal justice student at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology, was working in a supplement shop in Braeside on Wednesday evening when he suddenly saw an unusual pop-up alert on his phone.
The pop-up was a message telling him that an unauthorized payment of $1,900 had been taken from his ANZ Plus account and that he needed to take action now to prevent it from going through.
He said the pop-up appeared to come legitimately from the bank and when he clicked on it he was taken to a ‘copy’ of the ANZ website – the only difference was that instead of ‘anz.com.au’, it was ‘anz.com’.
Matthew Sweeney, 22, lost $12,000 of his hard-earned savings after falling victim to an elaborate scam
The uni student was then asked to enter their phone number to which a one-time password was sent.
Mr Sweeney said he then tried to access his ANZ Plus account from his phone but was locked out.
He immediately called the bank and quickly gained access to his account, but within ten minutes the scammer on the other end had stolen all $12,000 of his savings that he had earned in preparation for his four months abroad.
“I get scam messages all the time and it’s so obvious it’s a scam, but this one was so well done,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
“I’m 22, I’m relatively tech savvy, but there’s a new wave of scams coming, and it wasn’t even a scam, it was outright fraud.
“The fact is that I have no money now and am leaving in two months.”
Mr Sweeney completed a form with ANZ’s cyber security team and was given another report to complete so the matter could be referred to police.
He said he studied cybersecurity in college and isn’t confident he’ll get the money back.
Mr Sweeney said he received a pop-up alert from what appeared to be ANZ Plus, alerting him to an unauthorized transaction
‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s strange that (the scammer) can gain access to a supposedly high-security account in 10 minutes,” he said.
“I did enough cybersecurity in college to know that the money has probably ended up in some accounts by now.”
What made matters worse was that the 22-year-old had dropped out of college this year for the first semester to work and save as much as possible for his trip.
His family has since had a GoFundMe to raise some money for his upcoming exchange.
Mr Sweeney added that because he was serving customers at the time, he couldn’t properly concentrate on what the pop-up was asking him to do.
“If someone gets a pop-up like that, ignore it and take your time,” he said.
He added that it was possible that he had to enter his bank PIN, but during his panic he could not remember exactly what he had entered.
Later, he also received an email notification that a new device had been registered to his bank account that came from a different iPhone than the one he was using.
Mr Sweeney said ANZ was doing everything it could to get the money back, but added that a customer service representative had incorrectly told him the fraud team was only active after 5pm.
Mr. Sweeney was working at a supplement store and serving customers at the time when the message came through
Instead, he waited until the next day to talk to them, where he learned they were available 24/7.
Losing his hard-earned money has also taken a mental toll on the uni student.
“It was really tough, I was at work and I had to close the store early and go home,” he said.
He now plans to call the national identity and cyber support service IDCARE.
The service connects people with expert Identity and Cyber Security Case Managers who provide the best advice on how to respond to data breaches, scams, identity theft and cyber security issues.
ANZ has been contacted for comment.
