Airlie Ward reports on yet another case where hackers try to intercept/scam home buyers by posing as their real estate brokers or lawyers and having them wire money to them. In this case, the home buyer was the victim of child sexual abuse by the church, and was using the settlement to buy a home, hoping to pull his life together. And then…
The conveyancing lawyer Mr Fisher used sent him an email with settlement details and an account to transfer the $90,000 to.
After he made the transfer, Mr Fisher said he received a phone call from the lawyer asking where the money was – the email had been intercepted by a hacker and the account details changed.
Read more on ABC (AU). In this case, the victim was lucky, but I doubt most cases have a happy ending. Business email compromise like this appears to be a growing problem in AU, even though it’s not really a new problem in many places (e.g., see this 2016 story).