A mum of three opened up to DailyMail Australia a couple of years about how she was scammed out of $154,000 as a warning so others don’t have to go through the horror she did. Tricia Harding was devastated when she was swindled in an elaborate phishing scheme and wants banks to do more to ensure others aren’t conned the same way.
The scam started when Harding, who lives in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast region, sent an email to her children in Apr. 2022 saying that she wanted to give them some money. She and her husband sold their house and wanted to share some of the proceeds with their kids, and contacted them asking for their bank details.
Email replies seeming to be from her son and daughter were not really from them – though the address was nearly identical to her children’s emails.The only difference was an extra letter added to the addresses.
The cybercriminal sent separate bank details, supposedly from the children to Harding, and she transferred $154,000 to the crook.
Harding recently came on the Cybercrime Magazine Podcast to tell her harrowing story to David Braue, our Editor-at-Large who is based in Melbourne.
Listen to the Interview