By Violet Li
A Cranbourne banker has saved a local woman from losing $2000 by stopping a six-month-long romance scam, amid a rise in similar scams.
In late February this year, Maxine (not her real name), a local in her 60s, came into the Cranbourne NAB branch to deposit $2000 into an account.
She didn’t know the recipient’s surname when asked by the customer advisor Dilan Pathirannahalage, so she showed Dilan the surname in a text message on her phone and Dilan accidentally noticed very affectionate language in the previous messages.
He continued to ask Maxine the purpose of the transaction as routine, but she could not give any direct answers.
All these triggered a red flag for the banker, so he started to probe into what was going on.
It was found out that Maxine was adamant that the money was to help her boyfriend who was sick and needed the money for treatment.
“She told me her boyfriend, who she met on social media, lived in Turkey and needed to fly to the UK for treatment, but his account had been frozen so was unable to receive the funds from her,” Dilan said.
“He told her to instead send the money to his friend in Sydney who could then transfer him the money. The reason she didn’t know who she was transferring the funds to was because she had never met the person on the other end of the line who she thought was her boyfriend, and so didn’t know their friends either.
“Even though the holes in the scammer’s story were clear to me, she was blinded by her love for him. These criminals are cunning and will prey on people’s kindness to steal their money.”
Dilan noticed the photo of the boyfriend could be taken from the internet or a magazine.
“This guy is wearing like a full suit, a waistcoat. I asked, have you seen any other photos?” he recalled.
“Just none. So, only one photo in six months.”
Dilan then spent time with Maxine explaining why this was a scam.
“It’s very hard to convince. I spoke to her for quite a bit of time,” he said.
“They were actually calling her three times when she was in the branch.
“I said to her if I will give you some money, do you call me every time to get the money till you get the money? Normal people won’t do that.”
Dilan said the lady was thankful later for him intervening with the transaction, which had saved her from losing a whole paycheque.
He also pointed out that according to NAB’s latest statistics, reports of romance scams increased by 29 per cent last year.
“For me as a banker, we have so many customers lined up and we want to help them as quickly as possible. I was glad to be able to spend the extra time with Maxine to stop her from falling victim to a romance scam,” he said.
“I want everyone to know that if you’re not sure, just ask someone. We’re here to help.”
NAB is continuing to fight against scammers as part of a bank-wide strategy. It is running ads about romance scams across dating websites and apps and introducing more payment alerts across Internet Banking and in the NAB app, which will help customers spot potential romance scam red flags.
