A Victorian mother of four has revealed how she lost $13,000 from her savings account after providing her details to a scammer posing as a Bendigo Bank employee.
asserted
she → reveal → employee
Teagan Conn, from Echuca, was enjoying a family holiday at a Queensland theme park when she lost the money in the space of just 80 minutes.
asserted
she → enjoy → minutes
The 31-year-old received a call from a man claiming to be from the bank's fraud team and was falsely told that suspicious transactions had been made from her account.
asserted
transactions → receive → account
She said the scam appeared convincing as he already had her name, date of birth, mobile number and home and email addresses.
asserted
he → say → birth
Ms Conn was also told that she needed to follow the caller's instructions to prevent unauthorised purchases.
asserted
she → tell → purchases
She provided him the security code that was sent to her phone as well as a photo of her licence to supposedly confirm her identity.
asserted
that → provide → identity
Those details were enough to allow the scammer to access her Bendigo Bank account and spend $13,000 on Australia Post gift cards, according to Ms Conn.
When Ms Conn reported the incident to the bank, it acknowledged that scammers often pose as bank fraud staff.
uncertain
scammers → allow → staff
'When conducting cold calling scams, the scammers phone customers and appear to have previous knowledge (generally falsified), but convincing in detail, to engineer the call to align with their claim to be from the Bank's fraud or cyber security team,' Bendigo Bank wrote in a letter.
uncertain
Bank → conduct → letter
A Victorian mother of four has revealed how she lost $13,000 from her savings account after providing her details to a scammer posing as a Bendigo Bank employee
'
asserted
she → reveal → employee
In cases of disputed transactions, the bank must review and weigh up the available information to decide what occurred, based on what the information shows.
asserted
information → dispute → what
The Bank will place more weight on contemporaneous documents, being documents that are created at the time events occurred.'
The bank ultimately found that it was not liable for the loss.
asserted
it → place → loss
'I am satisfied that the bank is not liable for your loss,' the letter said.
asserted
letter → say → loss
'This is because the disputed transactions could not have been made without the use of secure codes that were sent to your registered mobile number on the account.
uncertain
that → dispute → account
'As security codes were used to complete the disputed transactions, the bank was unable to lodge a chargeback to the merchant,' the letter said.
asserted
letter → use → merchant
Ms Conn has since received a $5,000 goodwill payment from the bank.
asserted
Conn → receive → bank
She said she wasn't happy with how the bank handled the situation.
asserted
bank → say → situation
Teagan Conn, from Echuca, was enjoying a family holiday at a Queensland theme park when she lost the money in the space of just 80 minutes
asserted
she → enjoy → minutes
The 31-year-old received a call from a man claiming to be from the bank's fraud team and was falsely told that suspicious transactions had been made from her account
'
asserted
transactions → receive → account
The bank communication was really poor,' she told news.com.au.
asserted
she → tell → news.com.au
'I have no idea what the investigation process was, what it entailed.
asserted
it → have → what
'It was just, we've looked into it, you gave them the code… and we're not liable for your loss and that was it.'
asserted
that → look → loss
She said the ordeal had left her struggling financially.
asserted
ordeal → say → her
'They took everything, every last cent that we had from the sale of the house,' Ms Conn said.
asserted
Conn → take → house
We still haven't been able to get back to anywhere near that.
asserted
We → get → that
'When we got home from Queensland, we pretty much sold all the assets that we possibly could to get some money back behind us.
uncertain
we → get → us
We had to hustle really hard.'
asserted
We → have → ?
A Bendigo Bank spokesman told the Daily Mail that customers needed to protect themselves from scams.
asserted
customers → tell → scams
'It is important customers do not share their passwords or allow someone they don't know to access their devices remotely, as it is extremely difficult to recover money that has been transferred to scammers,' he said.
asserted
he → share → scammers
'The bank attempts to recover funds lost to scams wherever possible and it goes without saying when the bank is at fault, we will reimburse customers for the loss of funds.
asserted
we → attempt → funds
'Goodwill payments are sometimes made at the discretion of the bank.'
asserted
payments → make → bank
The Aporia
