Scammers posing as ANZ fraud prevention staff convinced an 82-year-old woman her accounts had been compromised overseas before instructing her to purchase nearly $40,000 of pre-paid gaming vouchers from a service station to “safeguard” her money.
A suspicious audio recording obtained by the Herald captured one of the scammers calling ANZ and impersonating the elderly victim to successfully request her customer number and move money between her accounts.
This is despite her son having power of attorney over his parents’ financial affairs due to their vulnerability and the family deliberately not activating phone banking to protect their parents’ money.
Police investigating the fraud say the woman is embarrassed and unsure how the scammers talked her into making 13 separate Neosurf transactions at Whangārei’s Mobil Plaza in the space of 12 days.
The lost money has prevented the family admitting the woman’s husband to hospital-level care for his worsening dementia.
ANZ is defending its security measures. It says it is working to understand what happened before determining whether to compensate the family.
Whangarei police Sergeant Andrew Ivey said the victim was an “unwitting participant” in money laundering.
He said it was highly unlikely the culprits would be identified or the lost money recovered, and in his opinion the case raised serious questions about ANZ’s fraud detection measures, and whether Mobil had inadvertently helped facilitate criminal offending.
“The concerning thing for me is ... the fact ANZ and Mobil haven’t picked it up.
“She’s an 82-year-old lady. First of all, why is she buying Neosurf vouchers, which are used for gaming, 12 days in a row, and up to $4000 at a go? Why does that not raise a red flag?
“I’m gobsmacked that a drug dealer could potentially go into Mobil, hand over $2000 in cash, buy these vouchers and have the money washed into their bank account.”
The victim’s son said his mother was first targeted via a landline call on November 18.
He said the female scammer told his mother her husband’s accounts were being drained in China as they spoke.
“She instructed my mother to attend the Mobil service station in Whangarei and to purchase a Neosurf voucher and use the number on the voucher to stop the money being withdrawn,” the son wrote in a letter of complaint to ANZ on December 8.
“This process was repeated daily over a [12]-day period with the daily amounts increasing to $4000.”
In all, nearly $40,000 was taken.
The son said at no stage was he alerted to the “highly suspicious” transaction activity by ANZ.
This was despite the power of attorney arrangement, phone banking not being set up on the parents’ accounts, and ANZ staff taking what he believed were “suspicious and fraudulent” calls from a scammer impersonating his mother.
He was concerned ANZ had failed to notice highly “irregular activity” on the accounts of a vulnerable, elderly customer who had banked with the company for 40 years, and that it had failed to provide any update for three weeks until intervention from the Herald.
In his opinion: “Financially [ANZ] are very well equipped but morally they’re horribly overdrawn if not bankrupt.”
The son was also angry at Mobil staff for not questioning his elderly mother’s strange series of purchases.
In a statement yesterday, ANZ said it sympathised with the victim, and acknowledged its communications with the family could have been better.
It was important to note the transactions were carried out by the authorised account holder using their own PIN, which is why they weren’t flagged as suspicious by ANZ’s security systems.
“It appears the scammer was also able to glean personal information from the account holder, which they subsequently used to set up phone banking.
“While we understand there was a power of attorney on the account, banks have no general obligation to monitor customers’ accounts to prevent them from giving their money to a scammer or making unwise decisions. This means we wouldn’t notify a customer for transactions that haven’t been flagged as suspicious.
“Regardless... we are endeavouring to fully investigate, which will enable us to provide a final outcome to [the victim], including what compensation might be appropriate in this case.”
The bank said customers were being increasingly targeted by scams. This case highlighted the importance of people being diligent about unsolicited calls asking them to make purchases or money transfers.
Sergeant Ivey said it was likely the scammers were based overseas and unusual they had directed the victim to the same Mobil station 13 separate times.
After the victim purchased the vouchers, the scammers rang her to request the serial numbers, which he presumed they had then cashed in or registered under another identity.
ANZ had now provided transaction details and Ivey had sought further information from Mobil in a bid to track the offenders. But identifying them would likely rely on Neosurf’s US parent company complying with a New Zealand Police production order, which it was not legally bound to do.
In the meantime, he’d suggested Mobil review its staff training and make a “goodwill gesture” to the victim in recognition of her significant losses.
The Herald asked Mobil why the pensioner’s repeated Neosurf purchases had not raised suspicions, what training staff received and whether the company would offer the victim a goodwill payment.
A spokesman responded: “Mobil is assisting police with their inquiries.”