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Australia is facing a digital bank robbery crisis, where the real predators lurk offshore and source criminal mule bank accounts to steal your home deposit, life insurance payouts, divorce settlement and retirement savings.
Australia’s waters are known for its sharks, but the real predators today are lurking offshore and sourcing criminal mule bank accounts to steal your home deposit, life insurance payouts, divorce settlement and retirement savings. Australian banks hosted 150,000 mule bank accounts in 2023, according to Biocatch. Today, people ‘rent’ their bank accounts for fraud and scams using social media groups.
Episode 1 of Daylight Robbery unravels the chilling world of digital bank robberies—the new frontier of crime in Australia. Forget the sawn-off shotguns; today’s criminals use stolen emails, fake documents, and exploited trust to siphon your life savings. From first-home buyers to retirees, no one is safe from this cybercrime epidemic. In the 2020s, it's customers who are the target for digital bank robbery - not the bank.
Modern day bank robberies target Australian property and real estate, like the sale of Harriet’s mum’s oceanfront home, where $1.6m was stolen. Organised crime syndicates target Australians for their pricey real estate and superannuation savings, conning them into transferring money to mule accounts they control.
This is a tale of miracles: how Australian digital bank robbery victims get their stolen money returned. Jacomi was conned by a fake Macquarie Bank website and a fraudster with a British accent. Everything—from the hold music to the disclaimers—sounded authentic. Despite overwhelming odds, her relentless effort led to her recovery of every stolen cent. It’s a rare outcome; only 2-4% of scam victims ever get reimbursed.
A work-from-home job scam stole $255,000 and turned a Melbourne mum into a money launderer for Chinese organised crime scammer, Neala. Discover the dark world of socially engineered work-from-home scams—a growing crisis costing victims billions. Discover how manipulative Neala used WhatsApp and deep knowledge of how Aussie banks work to steal from people she recruits through work-from-home job ads on Facebook.
Meet Mark Uytendaal who moved to the bush for a peaceful life that was destroyed by criminals using Australia’s banking platforms to rob him blind. Supercheap Security victims weren’t the only people fooled - so was ASIC and NAB. A Supreme Court case lifts the lid on how transnational bank robbery works to target Australian real estate and retirement wealth.
In this second episode covering the O’Brien V Supercheap Security case, Alex Brooks unpacks how Waheed and Mehdi orchestrated the theft that stole $1.36 million from Australian victims—including half a million dollars from lead plaintiff Jo O'Brien.
Most of us assume older Australians lose money because they aren’t confident using digital technology - but the story is bigger than that.
They call romance scams pig butchering - a brutal name which means ‘killing pig game’. Australia is experiencing real estate butchering: the slaughter of our property market through scams and fraud committed on Australian banking platforms. Our houses are the second most expensive in the world and overseas crime gangs know it's a cinch to steal home deposits and settlement funds, especially now the home-buying process has moved away from bank cheques to online banking through PEXA.
