Mum fell in love with a scammer and her bank won't stop the payments

Her mum, based in the NSW Liverpool Plains, sent her a document from an American friend named Phillip Moore.

"Mum wanted 20k from me to help her friend," she said.

Ms Stevens was "alarmed" because it was clearly a scam and she told her mum to call police.

"Mum got upset and said she would stop the friendship," she said.

The situation, Ms Stevens thought, was put to bed, until she received another call this year from her mum hysterical after she discovered she had no money in her account.

"I went through her bank account with the NAB bank manager which is when I realised she had a loan with Great Southern bank and was also paying Mr Moore," she said.

In total, Ms Stevens estimates her mum, 81, has sent more than $50,000 to Mr Moore as a lump sum by taking out a loan against her house.

How does she explain it? Her mum is lonely and she's used to "always having a man in her life".

A psychologist who assessed Sandra found she was "fully aware" that Mr Moore was a scammer but "does not seem to mind".

The psychologist found Sandra appeared "to have little insight as to the long-term consequences to the effect on her finances".

What is possibly more unfathomable for Ms Stevens is that while one of her mum's banks, NAB, immediately put restrictions on payments, the other bank, Great Southern, has refused to intervene despite Ms Stevens and her sister Sarah Appleby being their mum's power of attorney and enduring guardian.

"Great Southern seems to require mum to sign off," she said.

"They don't seem to care that she is brainwashed and not of her right mind or that she was eighty when they gave her the loan."

Ms Stevens described the situation to ACM as "extremely upsetting".

"I've had sleepless nights and I've been extremely angry with this bank," she said. "It feels like we've been scammed again by this bank who have not been willing to help us in any way whatsoever."

The bank's customer advocacy specialist Michelle Gleeson wrote to the family on October 18 that the bank was "very sympathetic" but to resolve the situation it needed "valid authorised instructions from [Sandra]" or "a medical certificate" proving incapacity.

Great Southern Bank did not respond to requests by ACM to comment.

Australians are losing millions of dollars each year to romance scams.

According to ScamWatch there were 2,489 reported romance scams in Australia in 2024 with almost $19 million lost.

Just over $11 million of those losses were by Australians aged over 55.

In fact, romance scams are the second most common scam in the country after investment scams.

The situation is particularly concerning in regional Australia.

A 2021 IDCARE report found that financial losses from scams in regional and remote areas were 40 percent higher than in metropolitan areas because of lower digital literacy.

"Regional and remote Australians were most likely to engage longer and less likely to detect a scam than Australians in the cities," IDCARE national manager Kathy Sundstrom said.

"Many living in these areas don't have family and friends or work communities they can check if something sounds unusual. We know the 'bystander effect' is significant in stopping scams in their tracks. Many services like banks have also removed their physical presence in regional and remote communities."

Indigenous Australians were particularly vulnerable with a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate cyber resilience information a factor.

Ms Sundstrom said Sandra's situation was not unique.

"We've seen this before a number of times where the person is completely aware that the person they are sending the money to is a scam, but they have done that emotional budgeting, and they value the connection so much that they continue to pay," she said.

Ms Sundstrom said it was "complex" about what responsibility the bank had.

"The mother might be saying it is my money, my right, I know what I am doing," she said.

"I almost feel scammers is too soft a word to describe what we are dealing with here. What we are dealing with is these organised criminals and they are very clever at what they are doing, particularly psychological manipulation."

The Australian Security and Investment Commission reviewed the anti-scam practices of Australian banks in April 2023 and found the "overall approach" from banks was "highly variable" and "less mature" than expected.

"Banks had inconsistent and narrow approaches to determining liability...which meant that a scam victim might get a different outcome depending on which bank they are with and which department of their bank they dealt with when seeking financial reimbursement after falling victim to a scam," the report found.

It also found scam victims were not always well supported by their banks and there were gaps and inconsistencies in the abilities of the banks to detect and stop scam payments.

University of New South Wales professor Salil Kanehre said scammers use a variety of techniques to trap victims.

"Once they have engaged with the victim on dating sites or social media platforms, they prefer to move their communication to private forms of communication such as instant messaging (WhatsApp, WeChat etc) or email," he said.

"This allows them to develop an intimate relationship with the victims."

He said scammers often spend "weeks if not months communicating with their victims and making them feel like they have formed a genuine connection before shifting the conversation to finances.

Red flags can be inconsistencies in online profiles, poorly written messages and persistent requests for video calls.

For Sandra's family there appears no end in sight to the pain.

Ms Appleby told ACM Great Southern's lack of assistance was causing stress.

"My mother is a pensioner and could now lose her home, despite the fact she was mortgage-free before this," she said.

"We have no idea how much debt she is in because they are refusing to give any information.

"It is unconscionable."

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of individuals involved in the story.