Krunal

Dec 30, 2024

Bank of melbourne fraud case

Hi, My friend has been targeted by cyber attack and someone hacked her phone, email and bank accounts. Initially, there was about 10K stolen from 3 different banks. It was Westpac, NAB and Bank of Melbourne. All three banks were contacted by my friend. Westpac and NAB was easy to contact and put the lock on account while there was no one there to help from Bank of Melbourne. He released this in middle of night and has to wait till morning for bank to open and contact them face to face. Meanwhile, they email to bank on the email provided on bnak's website. They are still waiting on the reply from bank on that one even after 20 days. After spending about 3 hours at Bank of melbourne, staff contacted few different departements of bank's fraud team and locked his account. Now, they didn't have any online access or any other access to bank account until he goes physically and provide ID, then only they can do transaction as per bank. When he went to bank after a week to some transaction and got a statement and found all of the money from his account has gone, was more then $100K. After going to branch and asking why this happened, they are saying it was only online banking lock but still people can do direct debit and other stuff. Basically, initial staff who helped them locking account, didn't do job properly and locked only online transaction. As a bank staff, it should be their responsibility to lock account properly as we don't know what are different ways of transaction. But when you inform bank that there are some fraud activities, it should bank's responsibility to lock account fully and put the account on high alert so it can't happen. Here, bank didn't do anything and let plenty of giftcards direct debit purchases to happen. As a bank, they should have some cyber attack prevention team, and should have realised straight away and should have declined the transaction. It looks like Bank of Melbourne has really poor cyber crime prevention team, has no security for their customers and their hard earned money. While trying to resolve, bank is giving excuses and there is no case number and not possible to contact case manager at all. When he tries to call, he is being transferred to few departments and no answer. To reach to right team, he needs to go to bank's branch and call from bank via their staff, then also, they can't contact case manager. Only, receives answer on the notes left by case manager. I would like to know is there any victims of cyber crime who has faced the same in Bank of Melboune? Also, would like to know how did they go and how they contacted to case manager? Also, interested in going legally against Bank of melourne or put this in Media together. It may help all of us to win the case against Bank of melourne. Thanks