Sorry, Mum: police and bank finally act on scam

A victim of the notorious ‘Hi Mum’ message scam who criticised authorities has been partially reimbursed by her bank and told by police her report was mistakenly ‘lost in the system’.

Private investigator Dan Halpin with his mother Gwen who lost money in a ‘Hi Mum’ message scam. Picture: Danielle Smith

A victim of a message scam who criticised authorities for inaction has been partially reimbursed by her bank and told by police that her report was mistakenly “lost in the system”.

Gwen Halpin, 71, and her son, private cyber fraud investigator Dan Halpin, spoke in The Australian last Monday of their concerns about a lack of effort in stopping and investigating scams that are reaping billions of dollars a year.

Ms Halpin said she was contacted by her bank, ANZ, the same day and told one of her transfers to scammers would be reimbursed.

“It was in the paper on Monday and I had a phone call a couple of hours later from ANZ bank to say they would refund $11,625 because alarm bells did go off at the bank and they allowed the money to go through,” she said.

When lost funds cannot be recovered, banks are known to reimburse scam victims in some instances where they believe fraud prevention measures could have been better. They can also take into account factors such as the age and individual circumstances of victims when deciding whether to refund money.

Ms Halpin made two bank transfers totalling $17,375 to a PayID after receiving a message from a number she didn’t recognise that began “Hi Mum”.

The message and others that followed in quick succession said it was her son, and he’d lost his phone and needed urgent help paying some bills.

The transfers were let through despite them involving, for her, a significant sum of money being paid to an account she had never previously used.

ANZ has refunded the money from her second transfer, but not the first. “I asked about the rest of it, but they said there was no alert with that,” Ms Halpin said, adding that she was grateful for the partial refund and it had taken the pressure off her financially.

More than 11,000 people were caught out by the “Hi Mum” scam last year, with 90 per cent of losses reported by people over 55.

Ms Halpin reported the crime to the NSW Police Force on the day it happened, September 20, last year. By then, her son had used the offender’s PayID to confirm a suspect’s name, South Australian bank account, email address and phone number.

But a NSW police event report, obtained through Right to Information laws, states: “Do you have a suspect? No.”

On October 5, less than three weeks after the scam was reported, NSW police updated the incident status to “no further investigation”, the report shows.

The reason given was: “All reasonable inquiries completed.”

The Halpins believed this meant the investigation had been closed, despite Ms Halpin not yet giving a formal statement.

On Tuesday last week, a female detective sergeant visited Ms Halpin and apologised for the case being overlooked. “She said the report had got lost in the system. She said she was going to look into it,” Ms Halpin said.

Australians lost $3.1bn to scams last year, with “phishing” or impersonation scams skyrocketing by 469 per cent to $24.6m.

Mr Halpin, chief executive of Cybertrace, said he suspected Australian police were not investigating thousands of cyber fraud reports. “If people knew the true extent of the lack of response of police, I think there’d be an uproar,” he said.