Spoofing scam robs Suncorp customers of $80k in minutes

A Brisbane family are heartbroken after losing $80,000 to scammers who hijacked their bank’s actual phone numbers.

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A devastated Brisbane family has lost nearly $80,000 after falling victims to a frightening international bank “spoofing” scam in which fraudsters contacted them using what appeared to be their bank’s actual phone number and text message service.

Enoggera couple Michael and Rachel Jorgensen thought they were being contacted by Suncorp’s fraud department when they received a call from the bank’s phone number last month telling them their account had been compromised and they needed to transfer their funds into a new account.

Authentication codes sent to them by SMS appeared to come from the same number on which they’d previously received texts from Suncorp.

But it was all an elaborate scam, and their account was drained of almost $80,000 in minutes, just weeks before Christmas.

The Jorgensens say the scammer had a British accent and fear they may have fallen victim to an international sting, alleged to have been masterminded by a UK man, and estimated to have robbed people across the globe of at least $90m.

The shattered couple are angry at what they say is a lack of action and support from Suncorp, and have written to the bank’s CEO Steve Johnston pleading for him to intervene and return their missing money.

The Jorgensens’ tale of woe began on November 13 when Mrs Jorgensen received a call from what appeared to be Suncorp’s listed Brisbane landline.

The man who called told her there had been a fraudulent transaction on their account and asked her a series of security questions.

Enoggera couple Michael and Rachel Jorgensen lost almost $80,000 in a Suncorp Bank “spoofing scam”. The couple are receiving no help from the Suncorp Bank. Picture: David Clark

Mr Jorgensen said when his wife questioned the legitimacy of the call, the scammer told her to crosscheck the number he was calling from.

It matched the number on the Suncorp website and when Mr Jorgensen rang it, it was indeed the bank. He said the man then asked her to log on to internet banking to increase their daily transfer limits to $50,000.

“We were getting two-step authentication codes sent to us and we were sitting there thinking this is Suncorp sending them, it’s legitimate,” Mr Jorgensen said.

“It took three transactions to empty the account of $78,198.

“He then told us to delete the Suncorp banking app and re-log on to show the new account, and he hung up. The phone went dead.

“We rang Suncorp back as soon as we got off the phone and were told, ‘You’ve been hacked, this is a scam.’ ”

It was a Sunday afternoon and Mr Jorgensen said they were told that Suncorp’s fraud team could not be contacted and if they didn’t hear back, the bank would be in touch the following morning.

The distraught couple rang the bank at 7am on the Monday and spent more than four hours on the phone “trying to sort everything out”, including cancelling credit cards and working out how they were going to pay the mortgage with “zero dollars”.

“Suncorp offered us $100 to buy groceries for us and our three kids, which was really big of them,” he said.

“We’ve been with them for 12 years and they’ve been hopeless, to be honest.”

Mr Jorgensen said they had been texted “secure activation numbers” to complete the funds transfers with “activation team members”.

One of the false confirmation texts

Another of the false confirmation texts

They later discovered that their money had disappeared into three Commonwealth Bank accounts, held in the names of the two “activation team members”. Mr Jorgensen said Suncorp had contacted the CBA on the day of the scam but there was no response until the following morning “resulting in all our funds being lost”.

He said when he finally got in touch with Suncorp’s fraud team, he was told that nothing could be done.

“Not once did they ask for any evidence like the text messages we’d received,” he said, adding that they had also lodged complaints with Queensland and the Australian Federal Police.

Mr Jorgensen said Suncorp did manage to retrieve just over $21,000 from the scammers’ CBA accounts but he and his wife were still $57,000 out of pocket.

Suncorp said it became aware scammers had been contacting customers pretending to be from the bank’s fraud department and issued a warning on November 2 on its app, internet banking and websites and social media.

“We also engaged the telephone service provider and Australian Communications and Media Authority to have the numbers used by these scammers disconnected,” a spokeswoman said.

“In this instance, after the customer made authorised payments to another bank, they contacted Suncorp Bank and we initiated recovery action.

“This resulted in a portion being recovered which would have otherwise been lost.

“The customer’s inability to speak directly to a fraud team member did not inhibit recovery action.”

Last week, authorities shut down what was believed to be Britain’s biggest scamming operation after criminals had duped up to 200,000 bank customers worldwide out of at least $90m.

Originally published as Spoofing scam robs Suncorp customers of $80k in minutes