7NEWS Spotlight has stepped in to save vulnerable Australians from losing their life savings to sophisticated phone scammers in a major international sting.
It’s a skyrocketing crime costing Australians more than $205 million and counting this year alone.
In Sunday’s exclusive expose, 7NEWS Spotlight’s Denham Hitchcock turns the tables on the complex, global web of thieves robbing Aussies of their hard-earned money, joining forces with a vigilante group who “hack the hackers” and save one Melbourne woman mid-scam.
The real-time rescue will shock viewers, as producers rush to the shaken woman’s home and stop the transfer of every cent of her savings to an anonymous caller posing as a spyware salesman.
Her confusion and desperation are palpable, her trauma made even worse when it is revealed she is a stage 4 cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy treatment.
The 7NEWS Spotlight exclusive also includes the chilling recordings of the “Indian Swindler” as he goes about his phone scams, stealing close to $1 million from Margaret Sutton, an elderly woman with dementia.
Back in Australia, reporter Ross Coulthart talks to another devastated family whose accountant father was hoodwinked out of more than $800,000.
In the US, Steve Pennells picks up the story of “scam-baiting”, in which ordinary Americans are fighting back against the scammers from their living rooms and garnering thousands of YouTube followers in the process.
I was scammed and no one from any news was interested in my story. I lost everything and I still am not good from being scammed. I did keep emails etc but no one wanted to help or even get in touch. I was helping my parents to buy a house and bow i can’t even but food. I hope you can help others. My bank didn’t help and neither was the trading forum.
I to was scammed by these a’holes. I was forced into early retirement due to brain cancer and needed every cent I had saved. After the scammers had finished I was left with nothing.
One thing the scammers did was get me to open an account with a website called wise.com. The scammers used this website to send all my money to and then send it to all other members of the gang. I contacted wise by email and phone to find out where my money went and they promptly closed my account which still has some of my money in it.
I wanted to post this because this site was not mentioned in the story last night. Another re flag. If anyone suggests opening an account with this site, just get away from them and never give them remote access to you computer.
These people should be charged with crimes against humanity.
I have recently signed up for trading which I saw in FB but for some reason I feel it’s scammers. I have invested $250 and am slowly being pursued to depo 5k but am keeping it at $500. I want to trade but is this legit or another scammers as I hear the background noisy…
Thanks Danim you rock and channel 7 too..expose these pest plz and save us..God bkess
Can you please put this episode on YouTube ld like to see this show again and show my mother and others please
I cannot find my comment about how I was scammed. Is there a reason why it is not here
Hi Lynne – We couldn’t publish your comment because it contained too much personal detail, and we didn’t want you to be targeted further.
Hi!
I’m wondering why banks don’t seem to investigate if it’s only “nearly”.
I got scammed last week, but after an hour of them going through the process, informing me my account had been compromised and verifying my identity (even transferring me to their fraud department) and telling me my accounts were suspended.
I even said I was wary as I had spoken to scammers the week prior, and they chatted about how to identify scammers. They actually got me to the point of transferring money from all my accounts into a new account they had set up, I said I had to take a break and then called my bank from a different number. I then repeated a mirror of the scammers process with the real bank.
I asked if they needed details of what had happened, they said that they wouldn’t do anything unless they had actually taken my money, and weren’t interested in the details of the scammers or the recording I took of the last 20 mins of the call. I thought it might be useful for training or something… it just doesn’t seem like they do enough.
Looks like the chicken are coming home to roost. Corporate greed blinded them for years to the folly of outsourcing the handling of sensitive information to a country with endemic corruption. The data and skills learnt are now providing fertile ground for running scamming ventures and a large scale as we witnessed in Channel 7’s investigative report.