Gold Coast couple lose $250k when buying house in devastating email compromise scam

They thought they were becoming homeowners – but instead they basically became homeless and destitute in the blink of an eye.

A Queensland family lost a staggering $250,000 to scammers in the blink of an eye — and anyone could fall for it.

Gold Coast couple Sarah and Laine Robinson, 44 and 39, had been saving up for years for their forever home and thought they were transferring their hard-earned deposit to make their dreams a reality.

Little did they know their email thread had been infiltrated by scammers and the sum total of their life savings was wired to online criminals instead.

The parents-of-three only discovered the horror of what had happened the day before their settlement, in September, when the conveyancer rang them to ask when they would be sending the money.

It was in that moment they realised that the banking details had been changed to an account belonging to the scammers. The email was missing the .au at the end of the domain.

The con, known as a business compromise scam, when scammers infiltrate a legitimate transaction at the opportune moment and impersonate the recipient of the funds, has left the Robinsons financially devastated.

“I’ve lost both my parents and this is on par with that because it totally changes your life,” Ms Robinson told news.com.au. “It was the most horrific week of my life.”

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Sarah and Laine Robinson lost years of their hard work in an instant.

Sarah Robinson has since deleted this heartbreaking photo from her social media.

The Gold Coast family took a triumphant photo in front of the ‘Sold’ sign out the front of the property in Mount Nathan before disaster struck.

Ms Robinson, a registered nurse, said she learned about the scam at the beginning of a shift and had to hold herself together for hours for the sake of her sick patients before she could finally break down.

All the family’s belongings at their rental had been boxed up in anticipation of moving into their forever home, but as the situation dawned on them, the mum and dad were left scrambling to find another rental to move into or become homeless.

They are now renting in Benowa and the dream of homeownership feels like a distant memory.

“Our reality is we can’t afford to live here, if we can’t get our money back,” Ms Robinson lamented.

The couple had sent $60,000 as a first instalment to secure their purchase and that payment did end up going into the real estate agency’s trust account.

By law, the property’s owner would have been within his rights to keep the $60,000, as a penalty for the aborted sale. But thankfully, he was sympathetic to their plight and returned the money.

Ms and Mr Robinson reported the fraud to local police and it was transferred to Victoria Police, because the person who received their money was traced back to a 20-year-old university student in Melbourne.

He is apparently co-operating with police in their investigations.

The couple managed to recover $80,000 as this had not yet been transferred out of the university student’s account. Unfortunately, the rest of the money – $170,000 — remains missing.

News.com.au contacted Queensland Police and Victoria Police for comment.

The couple have been less than impressed with the response from their bank and the conveyancers.

The house was meant to be their forever home. Now, it’s out of their reach.

The element Ms Robinson has found most frustrating is the response from everyone involved — with the bank and the conveyancers quick to absolve themselves of all the blame.

“Everyone says it’s not our fault, it’s your fault,” she said. “There’s a lot of systems that have let us down.”

She added that she wished someone had treated her like a “human being”.

When she told the conveyancers what happened, she said she got mostly silence from them. Then they came back to her and said they had done a systems check and had found no interference on their end – therefore they held no liability for her loss.

And the bank was even worse, she said.

The Robinsons had gone into their nearest ANZ branch twice to make the two transfers – first the $60,000, then later on, the $250,000.

A few days after making the final transfer, ANZ called Ms Robinson late at night to check the account details were correct.

She opened the email and confirmed they were.

Later on, the bank actually issued an apology to her for not properly stressing the seriousness of what they were asking.

Ultimately, she said ANZ also washed their hands by saying the couple should have called to make sure the details were correct.

“Never once did they say to ring and check the point of transfer,” Ms Robinson said. “Nobody told us. How are we meant to know?”

The family-of-five are now renting while they hope to recover their money.

In a statement to news.com.au, an ANZ spokesperson said they would not comment on individual matters but acknowledged scams are “insidious”.

“The ways in which criminal syndicates are scamming and defrauding customers is sophisticated and constantly evolving,” the spokesperson added.

“This includes business email compromise scams, where cybercriminals impersonate a person working for a company to convince a customer to send funds to an account controlled by the criminal.”

The Robinson couple have taken their case to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

ANZ has made their position clear that they will not be compensating them for any of the lost money.

The couple expect to take the matter further to the financial ombudsman.

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Originally published as Gold Coast couple lose $250k when buying house in devastating email compromise scam