Melbourne widow loses husband’s $760k life insurance payout to scammers

The Melbourne mum had already lost her husband in a shock car accident right before Christmas. Then she became the target of “evil” scammers.

Melbourne mum-of-two Jacomi Du Preez didn’t think her luck could get any worse following the tragic death of her husband in a car accident just weeks before Christmas.

The 48-year-old widow and her two teenage children were still grieving their beloved husband and dad Zak when they were dealt another devastating blow earlier this week.

On Monday, a scammer stole the sum total of Zak’s life insurance policy — a whopping $760,000.

Zak ran his own business and had taken out a hefty life insurance policy so his family could be provided for in the event of his death.

Ms Du Preez said she wanted to be a responsible “custodian” of the money and didn’t wish to take any risks so she was looking for a very safe term deposit account to put the cash in — a sentiment she said is “ironic” in hindsight.

Her financial planner mentioned that Macquarie Bank had better interest rates than most so she plugged that into Google.

Unfortunately, unknown to her, she actually clicked on a fake website expertly posing as Macquarie Bank. Over several days, they convinced her to transfer across the entire amount of cash.

Through tears, Ms Du Preez told news.com.au: “These people are evil”.

Jacomi’s husband Zak tragically died five months ago.

In mid-April, Ms Du Preez came across the scam website.

With a background in finance and auditing, she couldn’t emphasise enough how legitimate the website seemed.

Indeed, an IT expert later told her the scammers had used something called an Amazon Cloud Frontage which bypassed security measures, allowing them to appear on the first page of a Google web search for “Macquarie Bank term deposit”.

The fraudsters were offering a 2.5 per cent rate under the guise of Macquarie Bank which was better than every other bank she could find — prompting her to go along with them.

She filled out a form and the next day she got a call from someone who claimed to be Mark Dickinson. When she looked him up online, there was indeed a Mark Dickinson who worked in the finance sector. The cyber criminal had assumed his identity.

This was part of the “sophisticated” scam that caught out Jacomi Du Preez.

This scammer “was very slick, he had a British accent,” she recalled. “I asked a lot of questions, how does the interest get paid, how can they give me the rate. I didn’t pick up in any of his answers that he sounded uncertain.”

Another thing that lulled her into a false sense of security was the patience of the scam artists.

“He said ‘it’ll take a few days to open the account’. Three days later he called me back,” she explained.

From April 14 to April 25, she moved in increments the $760,000 she possessed, from her bank accounts with the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) and NAB into the scammer’s account. To ensure a smooth transaction, she even informed the banks to allow the large sums of money to process through their systems even if it raised red flags.

Then on Monday, she said: “I had a sick feeling in my stomach, I knew I was done.”

Mr and Mrs Du Preez.

Frantically, Ms Du Preez called Macquarie Bank and her worst fears were realised.

After notifying NAB and CBA and being told the whole process to recover her money could take four to six weeks, she decided she would take matters into her own hands.

Using her skills as an auditor, she followed the money trail and discovered that her funds had been channelled through three instant payment systems to finally end up in a cryptocurrency exchange where the scammers could render it untraceable.

First, the money was sent to Cuscal, an Australian company that describes itself as an independent provider of payment solutions.

Then it was sent on to a company called MoneyTech or Monoova which styles itself as a “versatile payments platform”.

Finally, the funds reached a small cryptocurrency exchange, ElBaite.

Ms Du Preez was invited down to the ElBaite Melbourne office after raising the issue with them and convinced them to freeze the funds.

Elbaite’s security protocols had luckily already detected that there was unusual activity in that account and had put a hold on it.

It’s just as well they halted the transfer because it’s entirely possible the money would have been exchanged into untraceable cryptocurrency and disappeared forever.

“I guarantee you if they catch me out they’ll catch 90 per cent of people,” Ms Du Preez warned. “I work in finance, this was so sophisticated, it was a complete set up from end to end.”

Zak Du Preez with his daughter before he passed away.

To make the situation even more heartbreaking, Ms Du Preez had confided in the scammer how her husband had recently died and that her investment was his life insurance payout.

Despite that, they pushed on with their fraud.

“Now I’m very suspicious of everyone,” she said.

The Du Preez family were relocating from Perth to Melbourne at the end of last year when tragedy struck.

Zak wanted to bring some tools from his business with him so he decided to drive to their new home separately.

Ms Du Preez and their two kids went ahead to settle into their new life in Melbourne. Sadly, Zak never arrived.

“He was on a lone stretch of road on a ute, they don’t understand what happened,” Ms Du Preez said in a shaky voice.

“He went off on the gravel, they don’t know how long he was there until someone discovered him.”

Banks respond

In some good news, as of afternoon Friday, several of these institutions confirmed to news.com.au that the money had been fully recovered.

NAB escalated the situation and confirmed to news.com.au that they had recovered all of the $140,000 that Ms Du Preez had transferred out of her NAB account.

“As soon as we were notified that Ms. Preez was a victim of an online scam, our teams worked quickly to see if the funds could be recovered,” NAB Executive of Group Investigations and Fraud, Chris Sheehan, said.

“We’re now pleased to confirm that any funds transferred from the NAB account have been fully recovered.”

Cuscal, Monoova and ElBaite all said they had worked with Ms Du Preez and the banks and that they expected the funds to be recovered in full.

“We are currently in the process of returning the frozen funds and that she can expect the entire sum of $760,000 to be returned shortly to her, and we are happy to have helped a member of the community,” an Elbaite spokesperson said.

A Commonwealth Bank spokesperson told news.com.au over the phone that the matter was being investigated with the utmost urgency.

“Where a customer has been scammed, we will work tirelessly with the relevant parties to attempt to recover any remaining funds for them,” they said in a statement.

Macquarie Bank said in a statement: “We're aware of an increase in scammers attempting to use our name to fraudulently solicit fake term deposit applications, and we have a series of warnings on our website and banking login pages about this scam.

“We also reported this scam to the relevant authorities, including the Australian Federal Police.”

Originally published as Melbourne widow loses husband’s $760k life insurance payout to scammers