00:00After years of helping people with their finances, Lily has now become a victim of fraud.
00:08When she sold her apartment, her real estate agent accidentally transferred the deposit,
00:13worth $26,000, to a scammer.
00:16I can't sleep properly.
00:19I can't eat properly.
00:21I can't have a normal life.
00:23Every minute for me is suffering.
00:27Both Lily and her real estate agent, HT Wills, were targets of a payment redirection scam.
00:33The agent emailed Lily, asking for her bank account number.
00:38She responds promptly with her ING details.
00:41But minutes later, without Lily knowing, a scammer sends an email from her account with
00:46new details from a different bank.
00:49The agent emails back to ask which one is correct.
00:52This time, they receive a third set of bank details.
00:56And instead of phoning Lily to verify them, the agent ends up paying the money into the
01:01scammer's account.
01:02HT Wills is refusing to return Lily's deposit.
01:06Its lawyers have told us that the incident is still being investigated, and that they're
01:11unable to provide further comments at this time.
01:14Australians in general are quite susceptible to these kind of attacks.
01:19The level of cyber literacy in Australia is relatively low.
01:23In the last financial year, just under 289,000 consumers told the ACCC that they'd been scammed.
01:31That's a small drop compared to the year before.
01:34The amount they lost was $330 million.
01:38That's a 41% fall compared to the previous 12 months.
01:41We are cautiously optimistic that the data sharing and the awareness raising that we
01:47are doing through the National Anti-Scam Centre is beginning to have an impact.
01:53But not soon enough for victims like Lily.
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