A British expat’s dream of buying a home in Australia has turned into a nightmare after overlooking a small detail that led to a disastrous $50,000 mistake.
Lewis Pentelow, who lives in Sydney, was buying a property in Melbourne for more than $600,000, Yahoo Finance reports.
When the 32-year-old received an email from his conveyancer to send the initial deposit payment, he double and triple checked the account details.
The digital advertising professional then transferred the money from an ING high interest savings account.
About 24 hours later, he sent the remainder of the deposit from an ANZ bank account.
“It flagged on there straight away that the name didn’t match,” he told Yahoo Finance.
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Lewis Pentelow, who lives in Sydney, was buying a property in Melbourne. Picture: Supplied
While the email looked identical to his conveyancer featuring the logo and details of the sale, Mr Pentelow realised the email address was slightly different.
It turned out that he had been a victim of a phishing attack.
“They knew all the details of when it was happening … and even though I was very cautious, I was just cautious to get the [bank account] details right.”
Surprisingly, ING has since had to implement a new industry-wide measure known as Confirmation of Payee (CoP).
The system checks the account name details and flags any discrepancies that might suggest the transaction is going to the wrong account.
“The banks have to have that feature [now] because it’s happened so much apparently,” he said.
“So it’s kind of annoying that if it was six months later, it wouldn’t have happened.
“Or if I was just with a different institution, it wouldn’t have happened.”
ING confirmed to Yahoo Finance that the security feature was implemented in October last year, just weeks after the August incident.
“ING has strong verification, fraud‑monitoring and recovery processes, and we act quickly when notified of suspected fraud,” an ING spokesperson told the outlet.
“Like all banks, recovery outcomes depend on how rapidly scammers move funds and whether other institutions can return them.”
The email looked identical to his conveyancer featuring the logo and the details of the sale. Picture: Supplied
Following an investigation, ING was only able to return $1800 to Mr Pentelow.
After he lost the $50,000 to the scammer, Mr Pentelow didn’t have enough money to settle on the house.
“I didn’t want to tell my parents. I wanted to just deal with it myself,” he said.
Mr Pentelow’s friend stepped in and loaned him the money to settle the transaction.
“When I think about it, it’s so fortunate … I managed to settle on the house and I’m slowly paying my friend back.”
Mr Pentelow initially thought the money would likely be recovered but he said ING “hasn’t been very helpful, to be honest”.
“Honestly, I thought I could get through to the bank a little bit more … My buyer’s agent was like, ‘Keep at them, keep at them’. But you just get kind of tired of it.
“They just don’t really care that and that’s probably the worst thing.
“They’ll send emails, so I’d follow up with stuff, and they’d send like lifeline contacts or mental health stuff. And I was like, ‘Are you serious?’”
Mr Pentelow is still hoping his conveyancer insurance could cover the loss but that would require proving their systems were compromised by the scammer.
According to the Australian government’s latest Targeting Scams Report, the number of scam losses reported fell in 2024, but Aussies still lost more than $2 billion that year.
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