Nina Merrilees was scammed out of thousands. Photo / 7 News
A mother has shared the clever tactics scammers used to swindle her out of A$11,000 ($11,800).
Nina Merrilees, from Victoria, was at work when she received a message from the fraudster posing as her daughter.
The WhatsApp message said “Hi Mum, my phone is broken, this is my new number”.
Merrilees said it was “fairly-standard” to receive a message from her daughter, who lives in New Zealand, telling her she had a new phone.
“She’s lived overseas for quite a few years and has lost her phone, broken her phone … so this was just normal to get a new number from her,” she told 7News.
The scammer then told her to delete her daughter’s “old” number.
The scammer then told her that the new phone didn’t have a banking app installed and asked if she could please send her some money urgently.
“I’m not sure about other parents, but we quite often make payments for our kids and they always pay us back straight away,” she said.
Merrilees sent her “daughter” three payments of A$3450, A$3800, and A$4350 using the Osko payment service.
The entire conversation was covered with love heart and smiley face emojis, in an effort to conceal the scam.
Her “daughter” said she would pay it all back the next day but the transaction left Merrilees feeling sick.
She sent an email to her daughter and her daughter called her right away.
Merrilees said she felt her stomach sink when her daughter’s old number popped up on the screen.
“As soon as I saw that number flash up I just knew I had been scammed out of $11,600 and just felt physically sick,” she said.
She reported it to her bank immediately but as the transactions were made willingly, the bank has not been able to reimburse her yet.
Her advice to other parents is to think twice if their children message them asking them to change their number or send money urgently.
“We thought we were pretty switched-on people and it can just happen so easily,” she said.
There were almost 10,000 reports of ‘Hi Mum’ scams in 2022 that lead to a total A$7.2m in losses, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) reported.
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