Man, 91, reveals the devious scam that convinced him to send $10K to India

Kevin Parson prides himself on being a reasonably savvy operator, but the 91-year-old was tricked into sending almost $10,000 overseas in a scam so persistent and elaborate that it’s hard to blame him for being suckered.

And now, he’s told Starts at 60 of his experience in the hope of alerting others to the sneaky methods used by scammers to win victims’ confidence. 

Parsons said he received many nuisance phone calls on his landline, and his usual habit was to just hang up. “But this one was different,” the former senior public servant recalled. “As usual, I hung up immediately. He rang back in a few seconds … He said he was one of a team working all over the country to eradicate the hacking of bank accounts.”   

The caller, who had what Parson’s described as an Indian accent, claimed to be from Telstra’s technical support unit and said that fraudsters were attempting to hack Parson’s bank account and that his Telstra account was in arrears by almost $10,000.

Parsons, who has a Telstra Bigpond internet account, said that although he was initially sceptical, the man called him repeatedly between 10.30am to 3.30pm in a single day to discuss the transfer of $9,850 from his own Westpac account to a bank in India to cover the arrears.

“He had a lot of my information – he knew my name and my address, my email account,” Parsons said. “He emailed me the details intended for a funds transfer … The physical bank’s address was in Calcutta in West Bengal. He gave a postal address too, and an IFSC code, which meant nothing to me – and a SWIFT code, which equally meant nothing to me.

The man asked him to go to his local bank to arrange the transfer but “I refused, saying that parking was a hassle, and there was a long walk to the bank,” Parsons said.

Parsons explained that the original man stopped calling him at that point, saying that the bank itself would phone him instead. Shortly after, a different caller, with what Parsons described as a “male, quite polished, Anglo Saxon voice”, started to pursue him, and managed to convince him to make the transfer.

It was only after the transfer had been made that Parsons became suspicious.

“He emailed me a feel-good letter,” he said of the second caller. “I think it was from ‘the CEO of Telstra’, thanking me for my part in the anti-scammer warfare … It was a rather amateurish letter, I would say … not the kind of letterhead you would expect the chief executive officer of Telstra to have.”

It was at that point, Parsons refused to take any more calls from the man, who was contacting him repeatedly to check that the transfer was being processed, and instead raised his concerns with a family member.

“He confirmed very smartly that I had been scammed, and advised me to contact my bank – Westpac at Wahroonga – immediately, with the whole story, which I did,” Parsons said. Parsons said that Westpac’s fraud specialists managed to stop the funds being transferred. “After a few formalities and professional cleaning of my computer, they re-credited the full $9,850,” he explained.

The scammer had the nerve to continue pursuing Parsons the following day, however. “The scammer rang me and was absolutely furious that the transfer had been stopped,” the 91-year-old said. “I told him not to call me again and hung up. In fairly quick succession after that, he rang me about 10 times on the same morning – and I’ve not heard from him since.”

Understandably, Parsons was both furious and incredulous that he was scammed. 

“I did pretty well in my career, but I was taken,” he said.  “I’m really furious – and I’m furious that I was so naïve as to let this person take me. I really did believe him, that he was genuine.”

Aussies just like Kevin Parsons lost $340M to scams in 2017 

None of us like to think we’d be gullible enough to fall for a scam. After all, there are usually obvious signs you’re being targeted – the outright and obvious unsolicited requests for money, dodgy-looking emails from suspicious addresses laden with typos and automated telephone calls threatening you’ll be deported by the Australian Tax Office.

Most Australians, including the digitally savvy members of the Starts at 60 community, reckon they could spot a scam a mile off. But the reality is that scammers are getting more conniving, their scams more elaborate – and they managed to rip off Australians off to the tune of $340 million in 2017.

According to the ACCC’s ninth annual Targeting Scams report, Australians lost more money to scammers in 2017 than in any other year since the ACCC began reporting on scams.

“It’s very worrying that Australians are losing such extraordinary amounts to scammers,”ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said in a statement. “Based on just the reports provided to the ACCC, victims are losing an average of $6,500. In some cases people have lost more than $1 million.”

The ACCC report found that investment scams were on the rise, up eight per cent from the previous year. Investment scams, the area in which Aussies were most likely to be stung, cost a staggering $64 million in 2017, while dating and romance scams caused the second greatest losses at $42 million.

This week is Scams Awareness week, and the ACCC’s Scamwatch is asking people to ‘stop and check: is this for real?’ when they’re contacted by scammers who are pretending to be from well-known government organisations or businesses.

Older Australians are more at risk of being scammed

According to Ben Young, one of Westpac’s executive managers of financial crime, scammers often target older members of the community

But banks have sophisticated surveillance and alerting processes to detect suspicious transactions, such as, for example, when an older customer who has never made an international transaction is suddenly making a transaction to India. Young noted that scammers however, are getting smarter, and are now advising the victim to go to a branch to wire money, not just via internet banking.

“We monitor all of these channels,” Young said. “Sometimes when you present this information to the customer, they can try to tell you it’s fine, or they may have been coached by the scammer about what to say. Some customers, even though they deny it at the time, will get back to us and tell us they had second thoughts. This can help save the money from being transferred.”

Unlike scams, fraud takes place when the customer has no idea a dodgy transaction has taken place.

Young noted that monitoring for standard credit card fraud was the bank’s “bread and butter”, but acknowledged that it was still an unsettling experience for the victim. “To some degree, customers, especially older customers get confused about what’s happened and it shakes their confidence,” he explained. “Often, we can just reimburse the customer, get them a new card and restore their confidence.”

Young said that if anyone suspected they’d been scammed or noticed anything untoward happening with their bank accounts, to get in touch with their bank immediately.

“The other important thing we do is try to recover the funds,” he said. “Whether it’s fraud or a scam, we’ll immediately swing into action and try to help. Speed is everything! The more aware people are, the faster we can get into action.”

Even if someone has been scammed and it’s too late to get their money back, Young said that it was worth calling the bank or Scamwatch, who could then ensure that no further money could be deposited into the fraudulent account.

How to protect yourself against scammers

Young offered some tips to protect yourself against scammers:

• Be wary. Be incredulous about any cold calls you receive. Talk to people, and ask ‘does this sound right to you?’. “Sometimes, just telling the story about where you spotted the scam can be very helpful for friends or your elderly neighbour,” he said.
• If you ever receive an email instruction to wire money, pick up the phone and validate it with the person, even if you’ve received an email from them before.
• Switch to e-statements so there’s less possibility of scammers stealing mail with important personal details. E-statements are also better for the environment.

Westpac, like other banks, offers a dedicated email address ([email protected]) and SMS number (0497 132 032) for Westpac customers to forward hoax and scam emails or text messages to for further investigation.

Following what he described as his “pretty horrible experience”, Kevin Parsons said that the government, and the nation as a whole needs to do something to address the “vermin” that is modern-day scamming. 

“From talking to friends and neighbours, it would seem that I’m getting off fairly easily – one or two unwanted telephone calls,” he says of his experience of scam calls. “But others are getting much more. One of my neighbours has cancelled his landline phone and uses only his mobile. Another is considering doing the same.”

Have you been the victim of a scam or fraud?