Scam cost young Mercedes-Benz AMG A35 buyer $38,500

A young Victorian woman has been scammed almost $40,000 after missing one crucial detail in an invoice for a brand new Mercedes Benz.

A Victorian real estate agent was scammed out of $38,500 while purchasing her dream car.

Georgina Smith, 25, missed a crucial detail in an invoice while trying to pay a deposit for a Mercedes Benz and instead sent thousands of dollars to a highly elaborate scammer.

While driving to pick up the new Mercedes-Benz AMG A35, she received a call from the Mercedes dealership in the Melbourne suburb of Berwick saying her deposit had not been paid.

She had received an email invoice from them weeks earlier, requesting a deposit payment of $38,500.

Upon requesting a copy of their invoice for verification, Ms Smith discovered that the payment information was incorrect.

Georgina Smith, 25 spoke to 7 News about her ordeal.

The scammers who use the “redirection” technique had copied everything in Mercedes’ communication with great expertise.

The fake invoice was identical to the original in format, style and information, except for the bank account numbers.

Recounting the ruse, Ms Smith told Nine newspapers that she had purchased a car from the same dealership the previous year and was familiar with dealing with them.

When the invoice arrived, she didn’t suspect anything unusual.

The scammer used a redirection technique, copying everything in Mercedes’ communication, except for the bank account numbers.

“It was really hard to tell,” Smith said. “Someone’s come in and basically altered the invoice and the bank account details, pretty much to a tee, like you wouldn’t even know.”

Ms Smith told 7 News that Mercedes denied responsibility for the scam and blamed her instead.

“I think this is the part that makes me the most angry is that initially, they blamed me almost instantly, which I thought was quite strange,” she said.

“They weren’t very apologetic from the beginning or throughout the whole thing at all.”

Ms Smith, a business owner, added she had even commissioned tech gurus to check her servers – and they found that they had not been tampered with.

Georgina Smith was scammed out of almost $40,000. Picture: Facebook

She eventually bought the car through her company and added: “I (deal with) large transactions every day. If a hacker was waiting and intercepting my emails, my clients would have money missing and they don’t.”

She has so far been unable to recoup the thousands and ended up paying $91,000 to buy the car.

She has vowed never to buy from Mercedes again, claiming their system was compromised.

Redirection scammers hack into company databases, copy legitimate invoices, and alter bank details before sending them to customers. This isn’t easy to detect.

A spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz Australia said its systems were not compromised, and they take cyber security very seriously.

“Sadly, the issue of invoice fraud is not unique to our brand or our industry,” they told 7 News. “It is a risk whenever there is an exchange of financial information online.

A Mercedes-AMG A35.

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“To mitigate this risk, we are continuously evolving security measures to make online payments safer.

“We also urge our customers to be vigilant by ensuring an email or invoice purporting to be from a retailer is legitimate by calling the retailer to confirm it is genuine and any account details are accurate.”

Between January 1 and September 30 of this year, Scamwatch received nearly 1000 reports of similar scams.

Victims who submitted the reports have suffered a combined loss of about $13 million.

Originally published as Scam cost young Mercedes-Benz AMG A35 buyer $38,500