Lived Experience Forum

[florencefifty]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 😈.

I had a call today from a zombie.

I work in client services for an investment company, and we had a client’s son calling in saying “hey, my Mum just got a message saying that someone changed her online portal password”.

I looked and I saw that the account had been marked as an estate account. I said “I think it’s just the processing team doing some stuff behind the scenes, because they thought your mother was dead. Sometimes this happens, it gets marked as an estate account by accident.”

He said “cool, but my Mum is definitely alive, she’s talking to one of your colleagues right now.”

I put out a message asking who is talking to the client and one of my colleagues put his virtual hand up. I said “make sure you change it so it’s not an estate account.”

At this, someone else goes “hang on. I just got a call from her son, he definitely told me she’s dead.” Another person said “I received an e-mail from the guy saying the same thing.”

I shook it off and took the next call. You won’t believe this: THE VERY NEXT CALL, this guy goes “my mother’s passed away, her name is […].”

I freaked the […] out for a good few minutes. The annoying thing for me is, I believed the first caller and then when the second person called in, I believed them as well, and thought the first caller was a scammer.

Then I realised, the second caller was a scammer. But somehow he had already changed the e-mail address on file, and was well on the way to fraudulently claiming this innocent woman’s estate benefits.

People talk about scammers as if they’re advertisers, telemarketers. But scams are genuine crimes, and they are not easy to pick up on.

Unfortunately as well, the client is based overseas, so that’s going to make any investigation 5,000 times harder.

Be careful out there, but don’t beat yourself up if you fall for a scam. The good thing is, it took a team effort to recognise it, I’m glad we were able to.

[RabbitHeart]

@florencefifty 
Happy (late) Halloween to you! 🎃 

Thank you for speaking about your experience with scammers. 
This is a serious concern in Australia and the concern continues to grow. 

I do hope that the Australian Government can implement more protections for the country regarding scams and crimes such as identity theft. 
Telecommunication companies also need to hold more responsibility and need to work towards protecting people from falling victim to scams.

If you’re interested (or anyone else who has experienced phishing attacks or scams of any sort) or to seek information regarding scams, refer to Scam Watch. Scams can also be reported to the Scam Watch site.