A woman has revealed the scary moment her and her partner’s life savings were almost wiped out in seconds, thanks to an elaborate scam.
Carly Portch, 34, shared the tense experience with Yahoo News Australia, saying she is still feeling “very nervous”.
“I was on the phone with my husband (Russell) when he received a text message from what he thought to be our bank, ING,” the Perth local said. “It said there was a new mobile device login on a specific date. It said, ‘if this is not you, review the account history’ and it had a link.”
The Hit WA breakfast reader said the most inventive part of the scam was that the message appeared under a text thread with all the other messages from ING, so “there was absolutely no reason to question it”.
“We made the decision to click the link, which sounds very silly but we’re both tech savvy and we thought it’s from our bank and they’re trying to contact us.”
Though once Russell received a message from his private email saying a Samsung device had been approved to access their accounts, “alarm bells started ringing”.
Quick thinking saved the couple
As soon as he got the email, they called ING who luckily took action straight away, however it was a very close call.
“He called our bank straight away and thank god he did because they froze our accounts straight away,” Ms Portch said. “Then he went into our…
