A WA mum has been saved from losing $1.2 million in a sophisticated property scam after a sharp-eyed banker spotted a tiny typo just hours before settlement on her first home.<\/p>\n
The woman had walked into Westpac\u2019s Riverton branch believing she was making a routine transfer ahead of buying a $1.7 million property.<\/p>\n
She was preparing to use a $500,000 loan and $1.2 million of her savings to complete the purchase later that day when she received an email appearing to come from her solicitor.<\/p>\n
The message urged her to urgently transfer the money into a settlement account.<\/p>\n
But something did not sit right with personal banker Neet Kukreja.<\/p>\n
Having worked with the young mum throughout her homebuying journey, Ms Kukreja immediately noticed the urgency did not match their previous conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe phoned me saying she was preparing for settlement on her home and needed to make a transfer right away,\u201d Ms Kukreja said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe customer was quite panicked, and she said she needed to make a transfer because settlement was happening at 12pm Eastern time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told her to come down to the branch and we would sort it out together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of processing the $1.2 million payment, Ms Kukreja paused and began checking the details.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tone (of the email) was slightly different. It didn\u2019t read like the previous emails, and that made me pause,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her suspicions grew when she noticed the instructions did not match the usual settlement process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe email asked her to transfer funds into a settlement account, which didn\u2019t line up with how these payments usually work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Kukreja then cross-checked the email chain and noticed a staff member supposedly involved in the conversation was actually on leave.<\/p>\n
Then came the tiny detail that exposed the elaborate scam.<\/p>\n
The email address of a supposed Westpac employee contained the word \u201cwesttpac\u201d \u2014 with an extra \u201ct\u201d.<\/p>\n
The scammers had copied legitimate email signatures and communication styles almost perfectly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the same email chain, there was an email from who the customer had dealt with before, confirming the solicitor\u2019s instructions,\u201d Ms Kukreja said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I checked on Microsoft Teams, I could see that the employee in question was actually on leave and couldn\u2019t have sent the email.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019d copied everything else, even her email signature, perfectly. It was nearly \u2014 nearly \u2014 a perfect replica.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Riverton team contacted the settlement agent, who confirmed no payment request had been made and revealed their email account had been hacked.<\/p>\n
The mother was left in tears when she realised how close she had come to losing her life savings.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a young mother and it was her life savings,\u201d Ms Kukreja said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen she realised how close she had come, she was in tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese scammers are so sophisticated. You have to question everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so glad I was able to prevent it from happening in this instance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attempted theft is an example of a growing threat known as a business email compromise scam, where criminals hack legitimate email accounts and use them to send convincing fake payment instructions.<\/p>\n
Property transactions have become a major target, with scammers exploiting the pressure and complexity around settlements to trick buyers into moving large sums of money.<\/p>\n
Westpac head of fraud prevention Ben Young urged homebuyers to slow down and verify any request to transfer funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuying a property is one of the biggest financial decisions most people will ever make and unfortunately scammers will try to take advantage of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone asked to transfer funds should slow down and verify the details, particularly if payment instructions change unexpectedly or come through on email.<\/p>\n
\u201cA quick phone call can make all the difference and help prevent life-changing losses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The near miss comes as National Anti-Scam Centre data shows Australians lost $166.8 million to payment redirection scams in the past year.<\/p>\n
Ms Kukreja said the best defence was taking a moment before acting.<\/p>\n
\u201cScammers rely on urgency and fear,\u201d she said. \u201cTaking a moment to pause, ask questions and verify details could save you a fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A WA mum has been saved from losing $1.2 million in a sophisticated property scam after a sharp-eyed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,48,1625,44,46,45],"class_list":["post-845490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-crime","tag-lifestyle","tag-news","tag-perth","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}