'Incredibly hard': Scammers 'thriving' off interest rate cuts

ANZ head of customer protection Shaq Johnson said interest rate cuts provided scammers with a chance to “thrive”.

“People, when rates are falling, understandably, they look for a better deal,” he told Today.

“And that’s why we see a lot of scammers posing as financial institutions, tricking people into transferring money into fraudulent term deposit accounts.”

Johnson said recent data showed a 70 per cent increase in deposit-related scams, up from the last quarter of 2024.

“And that’s why we’re urging people to be extremely vigilant when they are interacting with people online, trying to invest or finding better deals or interest rates, because once money moves out of their accounts, it’s incredibly hard to recover,” Johnson said.

Scammers use a “broad range” of tactics, including unsolicited offers of attractive interest rates on deposits.

Victims have also been taken in by fake websites online while looking for a better deal.

Johnson said scammers often avoided making offers that sounded too good to be true, opting instead for “just a few basis points higher than what’s been offered”.

“And what we see is the individuals who are trying to find these … better deals, they will fill their information and they will receive a call from a financial advisor or somebody claiming to be from a bank, and then they will send them some paperwork,” he said.

“They appear very legitimate.”

He said it was getting harder for people to decipher a scam, with crooks making use of dark web data and AI to personalise their approach to a victim.

“You just need to close to pay close attention,” Johnson said.

“If it’s an offer too good to be true, do your research. Stop and think. If you think that you’re speaking to your bank, you need to pay close attention to what you’ve been asked to do.

“You know, moving money out of your accounts, it’s not something that the bank will ask you to do.”