Anthony was always smooth and professional.
The London-based scammer, posing as an investment manager, would ring Newcastle disability pensioner Heather Jordan at 10pm every second day to provide support and guidance on how to maximise her returns from online share trading.
"He was just so professional and polite in how he spoke to me. I guess that's how he got me in," Ms Jordan said.
His reassuring tone and impressive understanding of international finance markets helped convince the 65-year-old to progressively transfer $240,000 into an offshore trading account between July and September 2023.
Ms Jordan's goal was simple. She wanted to earn a greater return on her investment than she could get with a standard term deposit account. The dividends would help her buy a small place to call her own at Fern Bay.
An Instagram ad promoting super high returns on short term cash investments caught her eye.
Its front was Anthony Bauer, who claimed to be a senior investment manager at MGM Global - an entity that has numerous scam alerts attached to it.
By the end of September Anthony advised Ms Jordan via a specialised share trading app that she had earned almost $1million on her investment.
As part of the service, Anthony would also set up an installment plan where she would receive $7000 payments on a monthly basis.
A call was scheduled to take place on Monday 18 September where they would discuss the documentation that Ms Jordan would be required to provide Centrelink and the Australian Tax Office about her newfound income stream.
But the call never came.
Instead, several men with Middle Eastern accents who claimed to be from MGM Global's Department of Finance began calling and demanding money be placed into their accounts.
They said Anthony was dead and if she did comply with their instructions she would be prosecuted by the Australian authorities.
"I was yelled at and threatened. They all demanded money up front," Ms Jordan said.
With her savings gone, her physical and mental health was also rapidly deteriorating.
Ms Jordan was admitted to hospital with hypertension last month.
"That's when I told my family. I'd been carrying it by myself for so long because I felt so stupid," she said.
"Anthony groomed me in a way that no one else could have groomed me. These scammers are so professional and nice that you get blindsided."
Ms Jordan is now staying with friends and has recently joined the social housing waiting list.
Her bank is investigating the circumstances of the scam, however, she has been advised it is unlikely that he money will be recovered.
"At the end of the day, I've got to live with myself. I know I'm responsible, I'm not trying to fob-off the responsibility to anyone," she said.
"I just wish the bank had rang me and said 'stop, or what are you doing?'
Speaking in Newcastle on Wednesday, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said every scammed dollar had a tragedy behind it.
"Obligations will be placed on social media platforms. They have to go after these people. They can't just say it's a free run and that they have no responsibility for what's published on their platforms. They do and we'll ensure that they are taking greater responsibility for pulling this (scam) material down."
A federal government crackdown on scams has resulted in a 29 per cent reduction in reported losses to scams in the past six months.
Despite that, Australians still lost more than $3 billion to scams in 2022.
Mr Jones attended a community forum in Newcastle to outline details of the government's anti-scam agenda.
The forum provided an opportunity for people to learn ways to protect themselves from scams, know what to do if they are targeted by a scam, and hear about the steps the government is taking to crackdown on this crime.
The first phase of the government's anti-scam offensive was the establishment of the National Anti-Scam Centre in July last year. The initiative was part of an $86.5 million investment to fight scams and online fraud.
This included:
- $58 million for the ACCC to establish the National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC)
- $17.6 million for ASIC to bust fake investment websites that promote fake scams
- $10 million for ACMA to establish and enforce an SMS sender ID registry to stop scam texts
The Government's crackdown on scams has already shown signs of success. In the six months since the NASC was created, reported losses to scams reduced by 29 per cent compared with the same period in 2022.
By last week, ASIC had taken down 4,220 investment scam websites, with another 540 in the works. And early data in 2024 shows overall scam losses reported are around 40 per cent lower than the same period in 2023.
"Our community and local businesses are more protected from scammers than ever before with the establishment of the National Anti-Scams Centre," Newcastle MP Sharon Claydon said.
"Every day, scammers are ripping money out of the pockets of hard-working Novocatrians. The Government is fighting back."
