This was something Hope Clifford and her husband experienced. “You can’t help but blame yourself,” she says. “Then the banks and everyone else blame you as well. We spent more than $10,000 on legal fees trying to work out our rights because it’s such a grey area and hardly anyone knows how to help.”

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There is also an unjust stigma that can come with being the victim of fraud. As Brooks says: “We don’t blame people whose house gets broken into, or whose car gets stolen, but the complexity of this crime means we blame the victim.”

Because of this unfair application of blame, the impact of scams infects other areas of the victims’ lives and can be extremely harmful. Brooks said that “complex PTSD is the most common diagnosis our victims tend to experience”.

Clifford’s mental health was significantly affected, not just by the fraud itself but by the two-year legal battle to reclaim the lost money.

“We’ve been told time and time again that it’s our fault, even though we found out later that there were many red flags that should have been picked up by professionals,” she says. “It absolutely brings you down. I now have anxiety and see a psychologist because our trust has been completely broken and our future is not what we thought it would be.”

For Canberra architect Harriet Spring, who was defrauded of $1.6 million, the emotional toll was severe. “I spent three months in a very, very dark place, distraught and suicidal,” she says. “I was humiliated, personally and professionally. And though friends and family were unerringly kind, I carried deep shame.”

In 2023, during what Spring describes as one of the hardest periods of her life, she unknowingly transferred the inheritance from the sale of her mother’s home to a scammer posing as a representative of ING bank.

“My sisters and I placed Mum into care, then prepared to sell,” she says. “We spent a year packing up our family home of three generations while juggling jobs and families in cities located three hours away.

“In November 2023, after the house sold, I sought financial advice and was advised to place the $1.6 million proceeds into a fixed-term deposit. I began researching options, unfamiliar with how deposits over $1 million worked. That’s when I was contacted over the phone by someone I thought was an ING rep.”

Spring, who prided herself on her meticulous eye for detail and her ability to scrutinise contracts and manage finances, says “George Thompson” from “ING” came across as diligent and professional. “He emailed me convincing ING-branded documents,” says Spring. “I did my due diligence and consulted my sisters: the rate offered was good but not implausible, so we decided to go ahead.

“I was instructed that the money had to be placed into a ‘Client Segregated Allocated’ account with Westpac. Although odd, it sounded plausible for an international online bank and was backed up by convincing documentation. I provided ID, was given Westpac account details in my name, and transferred the funds through my mother’s long-time bank, which missed obvious red flags. On the first of February, 2024, $1.6 million was sent to the scammer’s account.”

Spring says that when she discovered she had been the victim of fraud, she felt a mix of emotions. “My first instinct was that this would all prove to be nothing, and it would be OK, that this couldn’t possibly have happened. But then I contacted ING and they had no record of the account or the ING rep. They told me, ‘If it sounds too good to be true …’ It began to sink in.”

Spring says she felt an initial sense of hope, a belief that the bank would trace the money and get it back. But this was not the case. The bank but also other organisations she thought would provide support failed to help. The amount stolen, for example, was greater than the limit (a little over $1 million) that would have allowed it to be investigated by the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

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“Nobody cared – not the government, not the police, not the complaint regulators, and least of all the banks,” says Spring. “Because our loss was so great, we exceeded the thresholds for help, and all we have against the banks’ deep pockets are legal options – hardly a fair fight.”

On top of her family’s money being stolen, imagining the uses it might be put to were devastating. “It crushed me that our stolen money was now funding terrorism, human trafficking and other nefarious acts. Telling my sisters – I called or drove to see all four, one by one – utterly destroyed me,” says.

While Spring’s money is gone, she has turned her experience into something positive, co-founding a not-for-profit organisation, the Scam Victim Alliance. “We try to work alongside government, regulators and law enforcement to provide a different kind of victim support and help end the scourge of scam fraud crime,” she says. “I can personally attest that taking positive action on the back of a heinous crime dramatically helps your healing journey.”

Two years on, thanks to Hope and Tom Clifford’s perseverance, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority forced their bank, NAB, to repay 70 per cent of the couple’s loss.

“We got what’s called a panel determination, and it was an extremely gruelling process,” says Hope Clifford. “But it does mean we’ve created a precedent for other home-buyer fraud victims, which is the only highlight of what we’ve been through. We hope no one else has to be blamed and shamed and humiliated like we have.”

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