Yet another local person falls victim to a scamming epidemic this month

Warragul resident “Fred W” has given us permission to reprint his story from last week.  He does this in our hope that creating awareness will lower the amount of people that fall victim to the scamming epidemic that is plaguing Australians with a current focus on local residents of Baw Baw and Gippsland.

Scamming cost Australians upwards of an estimated $3,000,000,000* each year…. and a quite a few of those zeros are coming from Gippsland residents.

Fred’s experience it recorded as follows in his own words:

“COMPUTER SCAM

“On Tuesday 19th September 2017, I received a phone call to inform me that one of our computers (my wife’s) had been invaded by a Ransom Ware bug and I needed to hand the control over to enable them to assist us.The caller (Sam) said he was from My Digital Geeks the firm who had undertaken to keep an eye on our computer under a 2 year contract. They had supplied a telephone number 1800 xxx xxx and 1800 xxx yyy and a web address support@mydigitalgeeks.com on an earlier communication, and on this occasion rang on our house phone and subsequently my mobile. When the connection had been secured and he had control, he asked me to hang up while he carried out his investigations. Later a different person rang to say he was the Technician on the job and proceeded to try and explain what was happening. After about one hour he informed me that a security licence was damaged and we would need to take the following action, he would transfer $4000 into our Bank account, then I was to go and purchase 40 only $100 iTune cards and return to the computer where we read out the code numbers on the back of the card as he recorded the info at there end.. This we did.Next day we were informed by the Technician the numbers we gave were not acceptable and we would need to secure a further 100 cars. At this point alarm bells started, and upon checking found the $4,000 had not been transferred into our account. We started to ask questions only to be told “quick go and buy the cards, time was running out”. My wife took over the negotiations as I was not feeling too well, and managed to get a further phone number (08) 9467 2374 a Perth W.A. number, and the technician’s name (?) Andrew Anthony. After repeated comments to the effect of NO WE ARE NOT GOING OUT TO BUY MORE CARDS on the basis of my demise the call was terminated. Later on that night I rang the Commonwealth Bank and cancelled my DEBIT CARD, just to ensure that no further transactions could be done to my account without my knowledge, then today I called into our Branch of the Bank to verify all is well with my suspended account just as a SMS message from the CBA came through informing me that systems had been changed and to enter all my details to reactivate my account. I received the call as I parked my car in front of our Bank providing me with the opportunity to verify the details in the SMS. I was informed that no such situation existed and anyhow they do not communicate by SMS only direct by phone, and again the word SCAM was entered into my current life.As at the end of 21st September we have not heard from them and had not received the initial $4000.On 22nd September while awaiting to get advice from our CBA bank in Warragul I received a call from ”Andrew” berating me for not opening up an Internet Banking for them to transfer $4000. I firmly stated that in no way would I do so, as I do not trust him and I emphasised the point that I was still awaiting for him to fulfill his promise of the initial $4000. He indicated he was going to explore other methods to transfer the funds. At this point the call was terminated.”

Fred W

* “Most scams go unreported

Put together Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) data with another federal agency, the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network, and the reported losses from online scams across the nation come in at around $300 million.  Extrapolate that number using the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Fraud Survey and the actual, rather than reported, cost to the Australian economy is closer to $3 billion and rising.”  source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-19/cybercrime,-online-scamming-of-business-up-30pc:-accc/8537992