Banking fraud is a major problem in the age of technology and there are some very sad stories of people being scammed out of their life savings. This is one of these stories and this could happen to your elderly relative. At the bottom of this article I have included some steps to take in order to protect yourself against banking scams.
Retiree scammed out of $100,000
A New Zealand bank refused to reimburse a New Zealand retiree after cyber criminals gained access to his account and transferred $100,000 from his accounts to an overseas account.
The 71 year old victim believes the scammers hacked into his banking app.
He claims the bank should take responsibility for his loss.
Three unauthorized transactions were made from the pensioner’s account; the first of 49k and two others of $11k and 38k and while the bank was able to stop the $11k and $38k transactions it was unable to prevent the $49k withdrawal which occurred the day before the other two.
Some of the money was set aside as an inheritance for his grandnieces. It is likely they will now miss out on their inheritance.
The bank’s customer who has been with this particular bank for years described the bank’s position on this situation as harsh.
Police had investigated this matter but believed it was between the bank and their customer to deal with.
The bank had communications with the beneficiary bank in regards to the stolen money and say if they are unsuccessful in recovering the funds then they will not reimburse their customer for the loss.
There was no evidence to suggest that the bank’s own security system was breached and this was made known to the customer. It tends to suggest that somehow the customer’s to blame for this scam. However, he maintains that he did not share his internet banking login or password with anyone or divulged his personal banking details in response to an unsolicited email.
Unfortunately what happened to this pensioner is not an isolated incident.
Another pensioner was scammed out of $134,000 and his bank refused to reimburse him after they claimed that he did not take adequate precautions.
Precautions against banking fraud
Here are some basic precautions to take to protect yourself against banking fraud:
1 Do not put all of your eggs in the one basket
The pensioner in this story should not have just left all of his money in the one bank account. He should have opened an account with a separate bank and NOT linked it to internet banking and invested his grand neice’s inheritance in this account.
2 Do not click on links
Do not click on any links on any email you receive even if you believe it is from your bank because it may be from an internet scammer instead. It is safer to type in the URL address instead and just type in the URL address and log in.
3 Do not link your debit card to your personal savings account. Someone I know had $3,000 NZ go missing from his account when the website that had his banking details was hacked. Fortunately the bank reimbursed him the amount.
4 The other precautions are basic common sense ones such as not sharing passwords and changing passwords occasionally.
5 When signing up to a dating or other sites it will pay to use an email address which is different from the one which you do your banking.
