A small business owner from Western Australia, Aaron Scott, was taken aback when he discovered that $15,000 had vanished from his credit account within minutes due to a malicious hacking

incident. The ordeal began when Mr. Scott received a text message at 4 a.m., notifying him that his password had been changed. Alarmed, he checked his account and found that $8,000 had already been siphoned off in multiple transactions of $500 and $1,000.

Frantically, Mr. Scott contacted his bank, ANZ, and was advised to visit a local branch to close the compromised account. However, during the ten-minute drive to the branch, an additional $7,000 was stolen from his account. Frustrated and fearful, he questioned the safety of his money, wondering where it could be secure if not in a bank.

Mr. Scott spent 40 minutes on the phone with the bank's fraud department, but received no satisfactory answers. ANZ was able to trace the money to another bank, yet the $15,000 could not be recovered. The lack of clarity regarding the breach and the bank's response left Mr. Scott distressed and uncertain about the fate of his funds.

An investigation by the bank eventually confirmed that the money was stolen through an "unauthorized transaction" and that Mr. Scott bore no responsibility for the incident. The news came as a relief, as he had worried about having to repay the stolen funds. Initially skeptical about ANZ's reimbursement, Mr. Scott had filed a complaint with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority and informed the police. However, after weeks of attempting to resolve the issue independently, ANZ finally refunded the full amount back into his account.

Mr. Scott expressed dissatisfaction with the bank's handling of the situation, describing it as a "poorly handled" experience. He had been an ANZ customer for 27 years and expected better assistance. In response, Shaq Johnson, Head of Customer Protection at ANZ, acknowledged the stress experienced by customers in such situations and stated that reimbursement cases are evaluated based on individual circumstances. The bank emphasized its commitment to working constructively with customers during stressful times and mentioned an increase in reimbursement and goodwill payments for fraud, scams, and unauthorized transactions over the past year. Photo by Maksym Kozlenko, Wikimedia commons.