A young tradie who lost his ‘entire life savings’ to an online scam has warned others to not fall for the same trick he did.
Furkan Colak, 26, received a convincing text which appeared to come from ANZ telling him that his account had been accessed by an unknown person in Perth in August 2024.
At the time Mr Colak was trying to save up to buy a house in Melbourne and afford knee surgery for his dad, so he quickly acted in order to try and save his money.
The text had come through in the same thread ANZ had previously used to send him legitimate messages so he did not find anything about the warning to be suspicious.
Unfortunately, hackers had infiltrated the thread using sophisticated software which made it almost impossible to tell that the latest text was a forgery.
‘A scheduled payment of $472.62 to Jason Ling has been placed on a security hold. If this was not you please call us on 03 7020 6213,’ the text read.
Mr Colak immediately called the number and was placed on hold before a man with a British accent informed him that the entire account had been compromised.
After some coaxing from the scammer, Mr Colak hesitantly agreed to send $58,262 to a PayID that had provided before he realised it was all a con.
‘Because it’s come from an official ANZ message, I thought it was legitimate, that’s the only reason I fell for it, because it [appeared to] came from ANZ’ Mr Colak told news.com.au.
His mother had told him to go to the nearest ANZ branch just to make sure everything was right but he brushed off her concerns.
The man he was on the phone to even knew about a separate NAB account under Mr Colak’s name, which made him feel even more confident that it was all genuine.
Mr Colak followed the scammer’s instructions and increased his daily sending limit in order to send three separate payments to a ‘secure’ PayID which was provided him.
Sending the money there was the only way he could prevent the unauthorised Perth payments from draining his accounts, he was told.
The scammer said the money would bounce back into his account after 24 hours but this was not the case and by the time Mr Colak realised what had happened he contacted ANZ.
Mr Colak began growing suspicious during the call that something was awry when he was told to download software that he thought sounded a lot like malware.
Then, when the scammer started talking about cryptocurrency, he finally clicked and rushed down to a local branch to talk to a real ANZ representative.
The bank told him it was unable to recover even a dollar of the amount Mr Colak had sent to the scammer’s account since he authorised the transfers himself.
Although there was only ‘about 15 to 20 minutes’ between him sending his third payment to the scammers and contacting the bank is was already too late.
While he was in the branch, the scammers called back one final time and when the bank teller told them the gig was up, Mr Colak said he heard two men laughing through the phone.
The men then began mocking the teller in an n accent which led Mr Colak to believe they had used AI software to fake their British tone.
Mr Colak said he spent the rest of the day shaking and was even referred to a psychologist after the incident.
‘It comes to the point where you’re almost over it and then you think what you could have done with the money,’ he said.
ANZ warns users to never trust hasty emails or texts which appear to come from its banks.
‘You might receive a phone message – either a text or via a messaging app – with an urgent message to click a link or send money to an organisation,’ its website reads.
‘What catches some people off guard is that the scam phone message might be in the same thread as other text messages from that organisation.’
People should instead immediately call ANZ directly using the number on its website to confirm whether the text is indeed legitimate before acting on it.
Daily Mail has contacted ANZ for comment.