First home buyer loses $50k home deposit to scam

A British expat’s dream of buying a home in Australia has turned into a nightmare after a small oversight led to a $50,000 mistake.

Lewis Pentelow, who lives in Sydney, has been buying a property in Melbourne for more than $600,000, Yahoo Finance reports.

When the 32-year-old received an email from his broker to send the first deposit payment, he double-checked the account information.

The digital marketing specialist then transferred the money from an ING high-interest savings account.

About 24 hours later, he sent the rest of the deposit from the ANZ bank account.

“It was flagged right away that the name wasn’t the same,” he told Yahoo Finance.

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While the email looked like his sender’s with the branding and details of the sale, Mr Pentelow noticed that the email address was slightly different.

It turns out that you have been the victim of a phishing attack.

“They know all the details of when it was happening … and even though I was very careful, I was very careful to find out [bank account] the information is correct.”

Ironically, ING has since had to implement a new industry-wide standard known as Confirmation of Payee (CoP).

The system checks the account name details and flags any inconsistencies that might suggest the transaction is going to the wrong account.

“Banks must have that feature 1769654426 because a lot has happened,” he said.

“So it’s annoying that if six months had passed, it wouldn’t have happened.

Even if I had a different institution it wouldn’t have happened.

ING confirmed to Yahoo Finance that the security feature was launched in October last year, a few weeks after the August incident.

“ING has strong verification, fraud monitoring and recovery procedures, and we act quickly when we are made aware of suspected fraud,” an ING spokesperson told reporters.

“Like all banks, recovery results depend on how quickly the fraudsters move the money and whether other institutions can recover it.”

The email looked like his conveyancer’s logo and sales details. Image: Provided

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After an investigation, ING was able to recover $1800 from Mr Pentelow.

After losing $50,000 to a fraudster, Mr Pentelow did not have enough money to settle in the house.

“I didn’t want to tell my parents, I wanted to fix myself,” he said.

A friend of Mr Pentelow stepped in and loaned him the money to complete the transaction.

“When I think about it, it’s very lucky … I was able to settle down at home and slowly pay my friend.”

Mr Pentelow initially thought the money might be available but said ING “hasn’t been very helpful, to be honest”.

“Honestly, I thought I’d go to the bank a little bit… My buyer’s agent was like, ‘Keep looking at them, stay close to them’ But you just get tired of it.

“They don’t care about that and that’s probably the worst thing.

“They’ll send emails, so I can follow up on things, and they’ll send like communication or mental health stuff. And I said, ‘Are you serious?’

Mr Pentelow still hopes his transport insurance can cover the loss but that will require proving their systems were compromised by a fraudster.

According to the Australian government’s latest Fraud Control report, the number of reported fraud losses decreased in 2024, but Aussies still lost more than $2 billion that year.

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