Scammers deceive couple of Rs 2 crore by impersonating real estate agent
Simon and his wife fell victim to a cyber fraud. In the process, the ended up losing Rs 2 crore with which they were to purchase a new house.
Number of cases concerned with financial scams are on the rise. In a recent incident, Simon Elvis and his wife fell victim to such a scam. The couple lost Rs two crore while buying a new home in South Wales. Reportedly, they lost their savings of 10 years due to the scam.
The incident dates back to May when Simon received an invoice from their agent. The invoice included a request for the initial deposit of the property in Blue Mountains. Trusting and following the given instructions, Simon transferred a total of $274,311 (approximately Rs two crore) in two instalments.
Shockingly, they did not receive any sort of confirmation after making the payment. Few days later, Simon contacted the real estate agent. It was then he realized that he had been duped.
The fraudsters had intercepted the email, altered the invoice’s account details, and deceivingly taken away all the money. Such incidents are known as payment redirection scam, where scammers impersonate legitimate sources and manipulate the recipients into diverting their money into a different account.
The rates of payment redirection scams is rising with passing time. Small businesses reportedly lost a staggering amount of $13.7 million to such scams in 2022. Simon’s money was transferred from his Westpac account to an NAB account, which disappeared within hours. After going through some legal measures, the couple managed to keep their house after they paid a 10 percent deposit to the real estate agent.
However, the mortgage imposed on them went to get much larger than what they had anticipated.
Ms Kalinga