Scams are getting harder to spot and can have a devestating impact on peoples lives.
Sophie* attended a Townsville Community Law outreach clinic after she had lost $13,000 through a text message spoofing scam.
Sophie had received a text message that looked like it was from her bank as it was in the same phone conversation thread as other legitimate text messages. She then received a phone call from someone claiming to be from her bank, who advised Sophie her account had been compromised and assisted her in transferring the rest of her savings into a new bank account.
Within a few hours, Sophie realised that she had experienced a sophisticated “spoofing” text message fraud. Sophie complained to her bank and the bank’s fraud investigation team took much longer than they estimated.
The Townsville Community Law solicitor reviewed the bank’s Electronic Banking terms and conditions for Sophie and assisted Sophie in drafting emails to the bank based on those documents.
As a result of our solicitor’s assistance, the bank offered Sophie $4,000 in full and final settlement of her banking complaint. Our solicitor provided further advice on negotiating with the bank, the pros and cons of making counter offers.
Sophie was able to effectively self-advocate with scaled, discrete legal assistance services from Townsville Community and after negotiating with the bank, Sophie received a settlement offer of $6,000 from the bank and decided to settle on that basis.
*Name changed to protect identity