Mount Pleasant man, 91, loses $10k in fake McAfee online scam

What looked legitimate turned out to be a cunning plot as scammers tried not once, but multiple times to drain a retiree’s bank accounts. Find out how they did it.

A 91-year-old says he has “egg all over (his) face” after a scammer’s insidious plot to swipe $10,000 from his bank account.

Jolyon Forsyth said he made his “first big mistake” on Monday after feeling fed up from multiple emails sent from what appeared to be McAfee, a major American company selling computer security software.

“Some of them said, ‘We’re going to charge you $432 for three years of security for you computer’ and others said ‘We’ve just received your money, thank you’.”

The emails had no unsubscribe option, only a phone number.

“I rang them to say, ‘You haven’t received my money because I haven’t paid anything,” Mr Forsyth said.

“The problem about it was, I was talking to the scammers.”

The Mount Pleasant retiree said the person on the phone, who claimed to be Eric Wilson, asked him if he was sure to which he replied yes.

He was then asked to check his bank account online.

Mr Forsyth said he was “pretty upset” to discover $5000 had been transferred out of his Suncorp account and $4980 from his wife Enid’s ANZ account into a Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation account registered to a Rahul Taota.

“The (bank) has said to me the account has probably been opened in the name of an identity which has been stolen from somebody else,” he said.

Luckily, Mr Forsyth was able to recover the stolen funds.

On Thursday, Mr Forsyth rang Steve Jones from Mackay business CHAPtech to clear his desktop of Malware.

“What I have seen is the screen freeze, so I couldn’t actually do anything, and then his screen went blank and then I saw the mouse move from the bottom part of the screen all the way to the top to pause my (remote) session and basically cut me off,” Mr Jones said.

“At that point, I told Jolyon to turn the computer off, cut the power to it.”

Mr Jones said fraudsters had installed remote access software called Anydesk on Mr Forsyth’s computer.

“(Scams are) becoming more and more common especially when you get an email from what looks like a legitimate vendor,” he said.

Mount Pleasant retiree Jolyon Forsyth says he wants to warn others after he was scammed out of $10,000. Picture: Heidi Petith

Mr Forsyth said he was not proud to have been deceived but he was speaking out to warn others.

“If anybody gets that sort of ad, just delete it for Pete’s sake, don’t under any circumstances ring them,” he said.

To learn more about protecting yourself from scams, visit scamwatch.gov.au

And for information on protecting your device, phone CHAPtech on 1300 002 427 or email [e-mail]