Hi….I am hoping someone can give me some advice as my 89 (almost 90) year old Mum is very distressed about having lost over $1300 and I don't know what more we can do. She has a VISA credit card with St George Bank. Two days ago when she went to pay the credit card off she realised there had been two deductions for 18th and 19th December, 2019. She is the only person to use the card. The two deductoins appear as World Remit. The bank have been contacted who in turn contacted the Fraud Squad. They are saying that World Remit have two emails from my Mother's email address authorising the entries. At no time did she do this. There are no emails appearing in her send webmail box to say the emails were generated from her address. Because St George bank says that she authorised this they will no investigate any further. It has been left in the hands of World Remit to investigate. But reading reviews online they seem to have a lot of customers who are unhappy with their service so at this stage I don't believe we can get the money back. I might add that nobody other than my mother has access to her email account nor her Visa card. On the two days that the money was supposedly authorised my Mother had had eye surgery and there is no way she would have been able to use the computer She also does not have any mental issues that would make me think she has done this. Thank you kindly for reading my post and hopefully someone can shed some light on how this happened or what we can do.
Unauthorised Visa Card deductions
Comments
Ask for the email headers.
Oh and you should also be asking for how they verified your mother as email is not a verification document.
https://www.worldremit.com/en/faq/verification
File complaint with AFCA?
There are usually 2 dates on the statement, one for the date of transaction and one for the billing date.
If your mum had eye surgery there should be appointment / receipts / medicare details you could use to verify (just like boarding passes say you are out of the country).
It is also right that emails can't be verification. I believe she might have been sent an email to confirm transactions have taken place.
If you dispute a transaction it is up to the vendor to supply information but your mum should sign a stat dec or something like that and return to the card issuer / bank.
World remit, sounds dodgy already. Why would someone not send money using a proper channel like paypal, transferwise etc. Lots of companies out there to facilitate financial scams.
I would also suggest maybe to find a bank that has an app that allows you to freeze the card while in use. A lot better than these companies who refuse to do so and leave themselves open to fraud and making customer's lives difficult. It actually isn't that hard.
You can tell bank that Malcome Trumbull’s was tricked by some sending email pretending to be from Kevin Rudd’s office back in 2009 or 2010. As such they should not be relying on emails for financial transactions. They should be able to identify the beneficiary of this payment. Otherwise, tell them you refer this to media. Good luck
Sounds like your mum is trying to defraud the bank and you've caught her. Call the police.
I suggest you scan your Mum's PC for Trojans.
There is no way she would be defrauding the bank. We'
re talking about a lady who returns to a store to tell them if she hasn't been charged enough or tells Coles if they've missed charging her for an item on her delivery goods. More honest than me.😉Hi Op.
Do you mean that a email was sent to your mother to verify the transactions ? i believe they are referring to a code that is sent out by mastercard/visa that needs to be provided to authorize the transaction.
This sounds like a job for Tracy Grimshaw.
Not the hero we need, but the one we have
Does she even have an account or anything with world remit? does the email account have anything from them?
If there is an account with her email, she should be able to log in and see transaction history (password recovery etc)If theres an account and its not hers, then its possible that her email/pc is compromised. could be someone controlling the computer, could just be the email, who knows. You'd have to lock everything down and figure it out
But it also looks like world remit needs identity and address verification, so figure out what happened there. And they do this, and payment handling, all on the website, so there should be no "email authorisation" for any payment anyway. It'd be like emailing Paypal to ask them to send some money, instead of just logging in and doing it myself.
So what emails did Westpac get a hold of when such a thing shouldn't exist?Even in the case that someone hacked/controlled her pc (eg some fake "technical support service") and accessed all her stuff and sent payments to themselves, I feel like that would still be covered by VISA. Check their zero liability policy and maybe contact them directly to see what their policy is
According to the WorldRemit webiste "Every customer needs to have their identity verified at some stage when using WorldRemit. Part of this process involves photo ID and address verification." https://www.worldremit.com/en/faq/send-from/australia-oceani…
Did World Remit provide proof that your Mum had verified her identity and provided photo ID?
Keep records of your correspondence follow the steps here
https://www.ausbanking.org.au/for-customers/how-to-complain/
Possible that fraud team have done investigation incorrectly and have received a spoofed email (email that’s pretending to me from your mothers address)
It’s also possible her email was hacked, she may have had her credit card number somewhere in her inbox if that’s the case that should come up as a potential root cause keep putting pressure up on the fraud investigation.
Also that world remit outfit looks dodgy AF
I regularly use worldremit and never been asked to verify transfer via email. That said, they did ID verification during account setup and also asked me to upload me.
You can ask them to provide what kind of documents they hold for your mother and how did they verify the ID during account setup. This is line with Privacy Act 1988 so they can't reject this request.
Could there by someone else who visits the house, like a carer or a distant relative, who might have been able to somehow access the card details and the email account ?
Elder financial abuse is unfortunately very common, and often perpetrated by people who know the victim in some way.
Thanks everyone for your advice. I am happy to say that St George have finished investigating and have ruled in my Mum's favour and refunded the unauthorised money taken plus the $50 of fees for going over her limit etc.
Great to hear!
The date of the deductions are not necessarily the same as the dates they were authorized, so that in itself is not conclusive proof you mother did not (accidentally or inadvertently even) authorize the deductions.
Unfortunately at her age, is it possible she may have been tricked, is too embarrassed to tell you about it, or just has forgotten?
I would: