Tradie loses $58,000 in scam - and warns it can happen to anyone

A young tradie who lost his 'entire life savings' to an online scam has warned others to not fall for the same trick. Furkan Colak, 26, received a convincing text last August, which appeared to come from ANZ, telling him that his account had been accessed by an unknown person in Perth .  Mr Colak had been trying to save up to buy a house in Melbourne and help pay for his dad's knee surgery at the time, so he quickly acted to try and save his money.  The text had come through in the same thread ANZ had previously used to send him legitimate messages, so he did not find anything about the warning to be suspicious.  Unfortunately, hackers had infiltrated the thread using sophisticated software, which made it almost impossible to tell that the latest text was a forgery.  'A scheduled payment of $472.62 to Jason Ling has been placed on a security hold.

If this was not you please call us on 03 7020 6213,' the text read.  Mr Colak called the number and was placed on hold, before a man with a British accent informed him that the entire account had been compromised.  After some coaxing from the scammer, Mr Colak hesitantly agreed to send $58,262 to a PayID that had provided before he realised it was a con.  Furkan Colak, 26, was conned into sending his entire life savings to scammers after he received what he thought to be a legitimate text from ANZ in August 2024 The message (pictured) came through in the same thread which he had previously received legitimate texts from ANZ so he thought it was genuine 'Because it's come from an official ANZ message, I thought it was legitimate, that's the only reason I fell for it, because it [appeared to] came from ANZ' Mr Colak told news.com.au.    His mother urged him to go to the nearest ANZ branch to ensure everything was fine but he brushed off her concerns.

The man he was on the phone with even knew about a separate NAB account under Mr Colak's name, which made him feel even more confident that the call was genuine.  Mr Colak followed the scammer's instructions and increased his daily sending limit in order to send three separate payments to the'secure' PayID provided to him. Sending the money there was the only way he could prevent the unauthorised Perth payments from draining his accounts, he was told.   The scammer said the money would bounce back into his account after 24 hours but this was not the case and by the time Mr Colak realised what had happened, he contacted ANZ.  Mr Colak became suspicious during the call that something was awry when he was told to download software that he thought sounded a lot like malware.

Then, when the scammer started talking about cryptocurrency, urat kuda he finally clicked and toblut rushed down to a local branch to talk to a real ANZ representative.  Unfortunately, by the time Mr Colak realised he had been scammed there was nothing ANZ could do to retrieve the money Read More Elon Musk impersonator convinced woman he was her boyfriend while scamming her out of $26,000 The bank told him it was unable to recover a single cent of the amount Mr Colak had sent to the scammer's account since he authorised the transfers himself.