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Australians lost $91.6 million in 2023 to redirection scams where a criminal impersonates a legitimate business, usually over email, to convince consumers to transfer funds.
Scams of this nature have been on the rise in recent years, as criminals have become more sophisticated in their use of design details and AI-generated text to present a seamless duplicate of an email that someone might reasonably expect to receive from an entity with which they are doing business.
Just recently a Melbourne family were scammed out of $500,000 by criminals who impersonated the conveyancer they were using in the course of a property transaction. Unfortunately, the purchasers realised their mistake too late, after the lump sum had already been transferred to the fraudster’s bank account. In this instance, the scammers had actually hacked into their conveyancer’s web server and sent an email with the fraudulent bank routing information.
The family are reportedly waiting to see if indemnity insurance from their conveyancer will cover the loss.
Australian digital identity company, Livesign, has flagged that with vulnerabilities such as these, email cannot be trusted as a method of communication when it comes to financial transactions.
Livesign CEO Lara Paholski said that Australian consumers and businesses alike are particularly vulnerable when dealing in transactions related to certain industries – top among them, real estate.
“We know that the most commonly targeted industries for cyber-related scams are conveyancing, legal, real estate and construction, simply due to the fact that the transactions typically involve large sums of money flowing throughout the transaction lifecycle,” Paholski said.
“Given that scammers are actively targeting these industries, it [has] unfortunately put a significant amount of pressure on business owners in those industries to try to mitigate the risks of their clients falling victims to the scams, and their own company and brand being tarnished along the way,” she added.
Noting that email is now a technology that is “over 50 years old”, she said it is all too easy for bad actors to penetrate and intercept a company’s digital communications.
The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia (REIWA) recently flagged that rental redirection scams were also recently on the rise, particularly given the high-stress environment of the rental sector at the moment and the fact that prospective tenants might act in haste to secure what appears to be a good deal.
“If an offer seems too good to be true, it likely is,” the institute recently warned consumers.
REIWA stressed that it’s important for prospective tenants to view any properties they wish to rent in person, conduct reasonable checks, and always verify payment details verbally with the landlord or property manager.
The body also noted that renters should not be asked to send a bond or rent until the rental application has been confirmed and they have a copy of the lease agreement.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
