A British expat’s first step onto the Australian property ladder has become a lesson in how slick payment‑redirection scams can defeat even cautious buyers.
Lewis Pentelow, 32, was purchasing a Melbourne home for more than $600,000 when he received what looked like a routine email from his conveyancer requesting the initial deposit, Yahoo Finance reports.
“It flagged on there straight away that the name didn’t match,” he told Yahoo Finance.
That warning on the second transfer prompted him to re‑examine the original message, where he noticed the sender’s email address was slightly different to his conveyancer’s. It turned out he had been caught in 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.”
In response to rising payment‑redirection scams, Australian banks are rolling out an industry‑wide Confirmation of Payee (CoP) system that checks account names against recipient‑bank records before funds are sent. Developed by Australian Payments Plus under the ABA’s Scam‑Safe Accord, CoP is being phased in across major banks to flag mismatched names and reduce fraud.
“The banks have to have that feature [now] because it’s happened so much apparently,” Pentelow 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 told Yahoo Finance it has “strong verification, fraud monitoring, and recovery processes,” but was only able to recover $1,800 of the $50,000, noting that outcomes depend on how quickly scammers move stolen funds.
With most of his deposit gone, a friend stepped in so Pentelow could still settle.
“When I think about it, it’s so fortunate … I managed to settle on the house and I’m slowly paying my friend back,” he said.
The case lands as Australians continue to lose more than $2 billion a year to scams, underscoring the need to verify any payment instructions – especially for large property transfers – by phone or a secure portal before hitting send.
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