Qld scams listed: Who are the victims, how do the scams work?
Millions have been lost by everyday Qlders over the years to elaborate scams. We breakdown the worst – who were the victims, how much they lost and how the scams worked.
Scams have sadly become more and more common in Queensland as victims come forward with their horror stories.
While police and intelligence agencies do their best to unearth these scams, some slip through the net – to devastating effect.
In 2022 it was revealed Australians lost $3.1 billion to scams, an 80 per cent increase on total losses recorded in 2021.
And these were just the reported losses, with previous research by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) showing that more than 30 per cent of people do not report scams at all.
These are some of the wildest and scariest examples of when people have been fleeced >>>
The great email con
In April 2023 major telecommunication companies were reporting unprecedented scam numbers, revealing they blocked more than 66 million SMS scams and hundreds of millions of scam emails each month.
According to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission data, Australians reported more than 57,000 scams during the first two months of 2023, costing them a whopping $97m.
Phone call, SMS and email scams skyrocketed, with Scamwatch reporting a new highly sophisticated banking scam using state-of-the-art technology that makes the caller ID appear to be a bank’s legitimate phone number.
Family’s home heartbreak
A Brisbane family was in December 2024 scammed out of their $40,000 house deposit just days after slapping a “sold” sticker on their dream home.
Christine and David Rose, from Warner, and their four children faced losing seven years of hard work, when delivering the final instalment of the deposit for their first home together.
The scammer hacked into an email thread between the couple and their conveyancing lawyer.
Mrs Rose said that the emails looked incredibly legitimate and were signed with the same email signatures and letterheads and were sent from their lawyer’s familiar email address.
Social media attack
“I have your Instagram account, if you want to get it back, contact us.”
This was an email a Queensland business received in 2022 advising they had been locked out of the Instagram account their business relied on with nearly 30,000 followers.
Attempts to get back into their account were being thwarted because the hacker had changed the account email and contact number for notifications to his own.
The business eventually determined what the source of the hack was.
A staff member had received an email earlier from “Facebook Support” advising someone had raised a copyright report on one of the photographs on their page.
Young couple’s warning
A young couple in September 2018 warned renters to thoroughly check potential landlords’ credentials after losing their hard earned savings to a scam.
Zoe McKenna and Zac Barwick moved to Cairns a few weeks earlier to care for Ms McKenna’s mother and were desperate to find a rental property when a man called them after seeing their ad on selling website Gumtree.
Police then investigated a fraud which cost the pair $1400 after they transferred the cash without receiving keys or paperwork.
Pensioner loses everything
A Queensland pensioner in December 2024 said he was just weeks from homelessness after being caught up in an international romance scam that cost him nearly everything he owns.
More than 27,000 people nationally had been conned in romance scams losing close to $20 million in 2024 alone, according to figures from ScamWatch.
In Queensland, 656 people had been caught up in romance scams, losing $3 million, with ScamWatch warning that the holiday season can be prime time for fraudsters targeting the vulnerable and lonely.
Tracey Skeates, 63, from Caboolture, pawned his guitars and car to keep up with the financial demands of “Charlotte”, a woman who he met through Instagram.
“Just on Charlotte alone I would say I’ve lost $40,000. That money was my inheritance,” he said.
Family left appalled
The grieving family of Jennifer Board in February 2021 said they were appalled that scammers posed as a vulnerable family member to solicit donations off the back of the horror Townsville tragedy.
John Board said that a person posing as his uncle Graham Board, Jennifer’s father, had set up a fake GoGetFunding page purportedly for help with funeral expenses.
“I can’t believe it, it’s probably the same (people) that steal the cars, they steal the cars at night time and then set up scams in the day.”
Jennifer died after her motorbike was hit by a stolen car.
Couple left out in cold
A young family looking for a fresh start on the Gold Coast was in September 2016 left homeless after heartless scammers took them for some of their last cash.
The online scam robbed them of $1400 in bond money and left them questioning where they would live in the coming weeks.
Heath Ewart and his partner Sarah Kirkland moved to the Gold Coast eight weeks earlier with their toddler and newborn after a break-in at their home in Melbourne.
The couple were sent photos of a property and told a key could be couriered to them if they paid a $1400 bond to the woman’s lawyer.
Cops caught out
Queensland police officers were in February 2025 caught out in a controversial and internally-sent phishing scam email after clicking a link about a fake five per cent pay rise, causing widespread confusion amid pay negotiations with unions.
Police officers received the email encouraging them to vote on a proposed pay rise.
It’s understood the email was generated internally as a “training exercise” to test staff’s willingness to engage in phishing emails.
Queensland Police Union president Shane Prior said the email was concerning and showed a lack of judgment amid negotiations for thousands of workers.
Pet owners warned
Scam emails demanding pet owners to renew their animal’s microchipping registration sparked concern among Queenslanders, prompting police to reinforce its online safety messaging.
Brisbane pet owners in September 2024 took to social media to share screenshots of emails they received from a microchipping company, claiming their pet’s microchip had expired.
The email claimed the owner needed to renew the microchip registration and pay a fee through the link provided. It also asked the email recipient to update their contact details.
A Queensland Police Services spokesman confirmed police were aware of online scams where pet owners were targeted by scammers urging the renewal of pet microchip coverage and updating contact details.
‘Hi mum’ text scam
When Joan* received a text message in October 2022 claiming to be from her daughter she immediately went into mum-mode.
“Mum, save this temporary number as I have dropped my phone in the toilet (yes toilet, it’s basically phone wrecked, ordered a new sim,” the message said.
Believing it was legitimate, Joan replied and offered what help she could and knowing that her daughter was about to leave on a trip she offered to pay some of her bills, in part because her ‘daughter’ claimed she could not access her accounts without her phone.
It wasn’t until the pair spoke the next day that Toowoomab woman Joan realised she had been hoodwinked.
Joan was hit with the sobering realisation that the texts were from scammers and that she had just handed over $1800 to thieves.
Call back scam
In 2017 Queenslanders were warned against a sophisticated Central African scam, with Queensland Police Senior Sergeant Steve Smith saying people had started receiving calls from a number based in Cameroon.
The ‘call-back scam’ involved an extremely short call at times of great inconvenience, giving little or no opportunity to answer the phone.
Tax time scam
Tax time scammers were warming up for their peak swindling season in 2024, and a study by Australia’s biggest bank suggested many of us were not prepared.
The Commonwealth Bank was urging people to increase their scam awareness after its research found nine out of 10 people are confident they can spot a fake SMS or email, but its testing found only 69 per cent of adults could identify all the tax scams they were shown.
Therapy dog heartache
A woman desperate for a dachshund puppy as a therapy dog for her health battles was in May 2021 scammed more than $3000 by a fraudster who claimed to be a breeder.
Sunshine Coast woman Samantha Myers was battling a severe eating disorder for the previous two years.
As part of her recovery, she had her heart set on buying a puppy to keep as a therapy dog, and decided a dachshund was the best choice as a companion.
“Firstly I reached out to breeders who were selling litters, but obviously because they are very expensive and I’m unable to work due to my health I explained my situation of how I wanted to do a payment plan for the puppy, but it just didn’t happen,” she said.
Family loses $80k
A devastated Brisbane family in December 2022 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 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.
Widow targeted by scam
Scammers impersonated the grieving widow of a man killed in a head-on car collision in October 2019, in a sickening fraud that left the man’s family and friends reeling.
Shahid Islam, 36, was killed instantly in a road accident.
Within hours of the tragedy, scammers had assumed the identity of Mr Islam’s grieving wife Ferdousi Islam (also known as Jannatul Fardhaus).
The culprit or culprits used her name and a family photo to try and convince people to donate $5000 to the scam page.
Elderly targets
Police in 2023 urged Queenslanders to stay on the alert for a “heartless scam” particularly targeting the elderly.
Fraudsters claiming to be from the victim’s bank call them ask them to withdraw cash, telling them that a representative from the bank will then collect the money from their home address.
Victims were generally told it is “to safeguard them” from an employee who is emptying customer accounts internally.
They promised that the bank representative will deposit the cash in a safe account while internal investigations identify the thieving employee.
Originally published as Qld scams listed: Who are the victims, how do the scams work?
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