Richard* didn’t think his day could get any worse while sitting in his car parked out the front of his solicitor’s office on a cool day in May last year.
The Canberra man, 61, was waiting for an appointment to finalise his deceased wife’s estate.
Then he received a text message that darkened his mood even more.
Both his banks had sent him an SMS warning him that they had detected fraudulent activity on his account.
“That created a fair bit of angst for me,” he told news.com.au.
“I was going through a fair bit of stress anyway with my wife passing away, I was at my lowest.”
He logged into his banks — Great Southern Bank and ANZ — and with a sinking feeling saw that thousands of his hard-earned dollars had been siphoned out.
More than $5000 had been funnelled out of each bank account in two separate transactions.
But while Great Southern Bank “put a stop to the transactions” immediately, Richard found himself hitting a wall when it came to ANZ.
Because the transactions were “pending”, ANZ said they would only be able to begin the process of recovering his money once the transaction cleared.
“I just had to grin and bear it,” Richard explained.
“They stayed pending for five days. All I could do was wait until the funds left my account. I went back and forth with ANZ for the whole five days.”
One ANZ staff member even told him they couldn’t block the transaction because they “couldn’t disadvantage the merchant”.
This was particularly galling, especially given that he could see the money was going to a vendor in Kuwait, in the Middle East.
“You can imagine the stress of that,” he said.
“I kept logging into my bank, eventually it went from pending to out of my account all together.”
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ANZ then underwent a fraud investigation. “It was pretty much six weeks of hell,” he recalled.
Unhappy with the progress, Richard lodged a complaint with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).
Luckily, he was eventually fully reimbursed and withdrew his AFCA complaint.
But to this day he has no idea how the cyber criminals gained control of his debit card and were able to rack up charges in his name.
“The bank couldn’t tell me how it happened.”
More than a year later Richard said he is still looking over his shoulder, figuratively speaking.
“It has impacted the way I behave during the day,” he said.
“I check my bank accounts every couple of hours.
“Every phone call I get is suspicious. Last night I got one from an energy company, everything is suspicious.”
Aussie couple’s horror $5k discovery
This comes as an Australian couple’s dream trip to Europe turned into the stuff of “nightmares” when they discovered a fraudster had racked up $5000 in unauthorised credit card transactions in their names.
Peter and Kay Shaw, from Brisbane, travelled to Europe in May.
Everything was going smoothly until they learned their flight out of Portugal’s capital city Lisbon had been cancelled.
“So we had to make some alternative accommodation arrangements which we did through Booking.com,” Mr Shaw told news.com.au.
“Within a very short period of time, I got a message saying there was suspicious charges on my account.”
Concerned, Mr Shaw logged into his bank account and saw that three charges totalling nearly $5000 had appeared on his credit balance.
The money was spent on a Booking.com transaction in Amsterdam, approximately 2200 kilometres from where they were located at the time.
“We were really spooked by then, it’s just a little scary to be honest,” he recalled.
Mr Shaw immediately rushed to cancel his card “which is a pain in the arse when you’re in Europe with no money”, according to him.
It was the last week of their trip and they managed to scrape by, planning to resolve everything when they got back on Australian soil.
But this is where the true ordeal began, according to Mr Shaw.
“I got home and that’s when all hell had broken loose,” he said.
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Mr Shaw claims he struggled to get in touch with anyone from Booking.com to get the fraudulent expenses refunded.
“People need to be very wary. If they are owed money, they will have an absolute nightmare getting it back from Booking.com,” he said.
He managed to track down an Australian phone number but this went nowhere. Then he used the company’s online chat services but was stuck in a hellish feedback loop where every time he got in touch to chase up, he would get a new staff member and had to explain his situation all over again.
“They were asking me to supply a copy of my credit card statement, things like that,” Mr Shaw said.
“So I did that. I reckon three, if not four times.”
Still not getting any kind of follow-up, the frustrated customer decided to use LinkedIn to track down the email address belonging to the CEO of Booking.com.
“I was not getting any responses, where the hell do I go?” he added.
Mr Shaw sent an email off, then a few weeks later claims he received a phone call from Booking.com saying “please don’t email the CEO again”.
When he spoke to news.com.au, he said he still had a negative balance on his credit statement.
But since then, the company has reimbursed him for the stolen funds.
“At Booking.com, our primary aim is to facilitate smooth and enjoyable travel experiences for our customers,” a company spokesperson said to news.com.au.
“Upon further investigation, we could not find any evidence that the credit card details of the customer were compromised through Booking.com.
“We have blocked the user connected to this unauthorised booking and have worked to provide the guest a full refund for the unrecognised charges.”
*Last name withheld for privacy reasons
alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au