Wild twist in terrifying scam case

Paul Trefry was left devastated after the brazen criminals pretended to be from the ANZ bank, using a “spoofing” software to send messages from the bank’s official number.

The 56-year-old sculptor was under the impression that his business account was compromised due to suspicious activity, and therefore he was urged to transfer his savings into another account to keep it safe.

What he did not realise at the time was this was part of an elaborate and sophisticated scam, spearheaded by a highly organised crime ring that is believed to be operating out of the UK.

Paul said his “stomach dropped” when he realised it had all been a scam, and recorded the shocking moment the criminals turned on him with vile threats once he exposed their plot.

But now after he bravely decided to share his story, he has been violently threatened once again, with the criminals saying that they would use a gun to shoot him.

“They called me yesterday, I had three missed calls that had no called ID,” he told news.com.au.

“I had a feeling it was going to be them, so I decided to record it the next time they called.

“I honestly wasn’t surprised at all they called back to threaten me. I was expecting it.

“I would really like the police or whomever has the power to contact either Google or Apple to use their voice data bases.

“There must be a way to use Ai to find a match to the voice profiles of the scammers, which we have recordings of.

“Apple and Google would have voice profiles of all their users.”

In the new recording obtained by news.com.au, the scammer can be heard one again bragging to Paul about using his stolen money to go on a holiday.

“I had a fantastic holiday, thanks for asking,” the anonymous scammer taunted.

“Who needs a proper job when I can speak to you for 13 minutes and get $130,000?”

When Paul asked the scammer for his address, he gave one for a flat in the UK city of Reading.

“Come f**king find me, you f**king f**got,” the scammer dared.

“I’ll smash ya head in, ya little c**t. I’ll shoot you as well.

“I’ve spent all your money, and your never going to get it back. Your business is going to drown.

“You are going to live the rest of your days as a sad, broke, old man. How do you feel?”

In the previous recording, also obtained by news.com.au, the same scammers can be heard threatening Paul after he exposed their plot.

“You’ve been robbed of $130,000 at this point in time, how does that make you feel?” one of the scammers taunted.

“It was great dealing with you Paul, thank you. I am probably going to take a vacation very soon.

“I bought your details for $20, then I called you and swindled you.”

“Do you want to know what I did with most your money Paul?” the other bragged.

“Shall I tell you how I spent most of your money? The first thing I did was buy a prostitute and cocaine.”

When Paul asked him where he lived, the scammer responded with a vile death threat.

“I’m loading here, I’ve got a sawn off shotgun with your name on it,” the scammer threatened.

“I’m going to shoot you in the f**king face. I’ll blow your f**king brains out Paul.”

They even went so far as to wish Paul’s mother a “horrible death” along with other vile threats that are too explicit to include in this article.

Paul said is he not worried about the threats but hopes that the brazen criminals behind the elaborate plot can be one day brought to justice.

Since losing the money, he has had to make the difficult decision to lay off one his contractors and is unable to pay himself a wage at his business.

Instead, he is working for nothing in order to get back to a financially stable position.

ANZ’s response

ANZ Head of Customer Protection, Shaq Johnson, told news.com.au that the particular scam that Paul had been victim of was particularly callous.

“All scams are appalling, but this example particularly demonstrates the callousness of these sophisticated international criminal networks,” he told news.com.au.

“Scams are an insidious problem which impacts the entire community, and we are working closely with other banks, other industries and government as we tackle this society-wide issue.

“In this case, our customer was alerted to this scam by our customer protection teams after it was identified by our scam and fraud security settings.

“We successfully reversed one large payment, and recovered a significant sum from another financial institution that had received the funds. We continue to liaise with the other financial institution to see if the remaining funds can be recovered.

“This matter is currently being reviewed by the independent Australian Financial Complaints Authority. We will continue to actively engage with AFCA during this process.”

Mr Johnson explained that ANZ had a number of measures in place to stop scams from occurring.

“We have a range of measures in place to protect our customers from fraud and scams, including our Fraud Detection Teams and systems which operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and identify thousands of suspicious transactions every day,” he said.

“We review our scams and fraud prevention settings daily, as sophisticated scammers frequently change or amend their methodologies.

“In recent times Australia has seen an increase in sophisticated scams where criminals impersonate Australian organisations, including banks.

“These scammers try to panic their victims, may convince them to reveal security information like PINs or one-time passwords, and may ask them to transfer funds to a different account.

“ANZ will never ask our customers to share their card number, PIN, password, registration numbers, or a one-time password for payments. We will never ask our customers to transfer money to another account.”

He added that ANZ was aware of the rise of “spoofing” as a scam tactic.

“Unfortunately SMS spoofing, where a scammer purports to be sending an SMS from a legitimate organisation, has been a common criminal tactic across Australia in recent months,” Mr Johnson explained.

“These do not originate from official channels. To address this, ANZ is working to put in place measures to prevent criminals from adopting the ‘ANZ’ label.

“We have also worked to alert our customers to this specific tactic by pushing alert messages directly to all customers that use our internet Banking or ANZ App to warn specifically against this type of scam.

“Since December 2022 our homepage has also carried an alert for customers specifically regarding the increase in fake phone and text scams.

“We always attempt to recover funds customers have lost to scams or fraud. However, the ability to recover funds depends on a number of factors including whether they are transferred to another financial institution, how quickly it is reported to us and the speed in which funds are then on-transferred by scammers. In many instances, cyber criminals on-transfer funds within minutes, or use them to purchase cryptocurrency.

“ANZ customers who believe they may have been a victim of a scam should contact us immediately, on 13 33 50 or visit us at http://www.anz.com.au/security/report-fraud/ for more information.”