Imagine transferring your house deposit, the savings of a decade, and discovering days later that it went to a criminal’s account. That’s payment redirection, the scam now targeting Australian property settlements, and losses have climbed from around $13 million in 2021 to more than $43 million in recent years. The good news: it’s almost entirely defeatable with a few simple habits. Here’s what every buyer and seller needs to know.
How the Scam Actually Works
Payment redirection is patient and precise. Criminals compromise or convincingly clone an email account belonging to someone in your transaction, an agent, conveyancer or sometimes the buyer themselves, then quietly watch the correspondence, sometimes for weeks.
When settlement approaches and a payment falls due, they strike: an email arrives that looks exactly right, correct signature, tone and timing, advising that bank account details have changed or providing details for the transfer. The email address may differ from the real one by a single character. Transfer the money and it’s typically moved offshore within hours, often unrecoverable.
“Property transactions are prime targets for this scam,” Western Australia’s ScamNet warns.
The victims are ordinary people at the biggest financial moment of their lives. Recent cases include a Perth buyer who lost $730,000, a Gold Coast couple who lost a $250,000 deposit, and first home buyers who lost $133,000 to an email address with one added letter.
The Red Flags
A handful of signals should stop you cold. Any email advising that bank account details have changed is the classic move, legitimate firms almost never change trust account details mid-transaction, and many now state they will never do so by email. Urgency is the other tell: pressure to transfer immediately, especially near a settlement deadline, is engineered to stop you double-checking. And any subtle oddity in an email address, an extra letter, a missing “.au”, an unusual domain, deserves full suspicion.
The Habits That Defeat It
The core defence is beautifully simple: never act on bank details received by email. Before transferring any amount, call your conveyancer or agent on a number you already know, from their website or your earlier documents, never from the email itself, and verbally confirm the BSB and account number. Every time, no exceptions.
Layer on a few more protections. Use secure platforms where offered, such as PEXA Key, which exist precisely so bank details never travel by email. Turn on multi-factor authentication on your own email account, since buyer inboxes are compromised as often as professionals’. Consider a small test transfer first and confirm it arrived by phone before sending the balance. And take bank warnings seriously, if a Confirmation of Payee alert says the account name doesn’t match, stop.
If the Worst Happens
Speed is everything. Contact your bank immediately and ask them to attempt recall, then report to ReportCyber and Scamwatch, and notify your conveyancer, agent and police. Funds are sometimes recovered when reports are made within hours, and almost never when they’re made after days. Official guidance and reporting are at Scamwatch and the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
The Bigger Picture
Property settlements attract this scam for one reason: it’s where the largest sums move between ordinary people under time pressure. Electronic conveyancing has made settlements faster and in many ways safer, but the human channel, email, remains the weak link. One phone call to a known number before every transfer closes it. Make that call non-negotiable in your purchase, and this scam simply cannot touch you.
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