Melbourne widow loses husband’s $760k life insurance payout to scammers
- iamjoyblessy
- May 23, 2022
- 2 min read
Melbourne mum-of-two Jacomi Du Preez didn’t think her luck could get any worse following the tragic death of her husband in a car accident just weeks before Christmas.
The 48-year-old widow and her two teenage children were still grieving their beloved husband and dad Zak when they were dealt another devastating blow earlier this week.
On Monday, a scammer stole the sum total of Zak’s life insurance policy — a whopping $760,000.
Zak ran his own business and had taken out a hefty life insurance policy so his family could be provided for in the event of his death.
Ms Du Preez said she wanted to be a responsible “custodian” of the money and didn’t wish to take any risks so she was looking for a very safe term deposit account to put the cash in — a sentiment she said is “ironic” in hindsight.
Her financial planner mentioned that Macquarie Bank had better interest rates than most so she plugged that into Google.
Unfortunately, unknown to her, she actually clicked on a fake website expertly posing as Macquarie Bank. Over several days, they convinced her to transfer across the entire amount of cash.
Through tears, Ms Du Preez told news.com.au: “These people are evil”.
In mid-April, Ms Du Preez came across the scam website.
With a background in finance and auditing, she couldn’t emphasise enough how legitimate the website seemed.
Indeed, an IT expert later told her the scammers had used something called an Amazon Cloud Frontage which bypassed security measures, allowing them to appear on the first page of a Google web search for “Macquarie Bank term deposit”.
The fraudsters were offering a 2.5 per cent rate under the guise of Macquarie Bank which was better than every other bank she could find — prompting her to go along with them.
She filled out a form and the next day she got a call from someone who claimed to be Mark Dickinson. When she looked him up online, there was indeed a Mark Dickinson who worked in the finance sector. The cyber criminal had assumed his identity.
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