Annelise Sunderland confesses to role in $1m dodgy email scam

The email addresses were virtually identical, but for a strategically placed letter ‘i’. The difference almost cost a Canberra woman a million dollars.

Annelise Sunderland will face sentencing next month after pleading guilty to fraud offences stemming from her involvement in a compromised email scam. Picture: John Grainger

Details of how a single, strategically placed letter ‘i’ in a scam email address almost cost a Canberra home buyer $1 million have been revealed after the woman responsible for the fraud confessed to her crimes in court.

A set of agreed facts tendered to Parramatta Local Court said the unsuspecting victim, Kathryn Howell, had engaged the services of ACT law firm Graeme C Nettle and Associated Lawyers in December 2020 after deciding the sell her home and purchase a new one.

Ms Howell sent multiple emails to the law firm through its genuine domain - registered as nettle.com.

However, after finding her dream property six months later, Ms Howell was sent correspondence from an email address using the domain niettle.com, which had been registered in October 2020 by unknown persons.

The email, purporting to be from the law firm, advised Ms Howell to transfer the deposit of $1,044,050, into a National Australian Bank account for settlement to occur.

Annelise Sunderland attempted to hide her face from the camera when she appeared in court in December 2021. Pictures: John Grainger

The account belonged to 31-year-old Parramatta woman Annelise Sunderland, who police said was akin to a “money mule”, operating on behalf of unknown criminals involved in large scale internet fraud.

The court heard Ms Howell quickly realised the mistake after contacting the law firm to confirm the transfer, and her bank was able to retrieve all but $2,000 of the payment.

It is alleged Sunderland was acting as a ‘money mule’ for a larger criminal network. Picture: John Grainger

The matter was reported to the NSW Police cybercrime squad, who launched an investigation under Strike Force Urban, which was set up to target cyber-enabled “invoice frauds” or business email compromise (BEC) frauds and the subsequent laundering of money obtained from them.

The agreed facts explained that a BEC fraud occurs when an individual or a company “receives an invoice falsely purporting to be from a legitimate goods or services provider, seeking payment into an offender’s account or commonly an account held by a ‘money mule’.”

“Proceeds of [these] crimes are typically transferred by the money mule to other accounts or converted to other valuable but untraceable commodities, e.g. cash, gold or cryptocurrency,” the agreed facts said.

The court heard at the time of the offending, Sunderland had an account with ABC Bullion, which had a purchase order created and ready to be processed for 8kg of gold bullion worth $614,888.

Sunderland has since pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

The transaction was unable to be completed after NAB froze Sunderland’s accounts and returned the funds to Ms Howell.

Sunderland was arrested on November 24, 2021 and charged with two counts of recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime, to which she pleaded guilty.

She remains on conditional bail and will face Parramatta Local Court for sentencing on March 8.