What you have written sounds like the mojo of scammers. This is a similar, but slightly different example.. It smells strongly of a scammer as who would use someone else’s credit card to pay the ATO $50k. Either the person trying to make the fraudulent transaction is incredibly stupid, wants to get caught or is the "‘scenario’ manufactured by scammers to hook the unwary (I know which one it is most likely to be).
Where did you get the Westpac Card Services number from? I hope it wasn’t from the…
If it was, you may have been talking to scammers rather than Westpac.
One of our neighbours had a very similar experience…and was being led up the proverbial garden path by scammers. They ‘acted’ as being from the ANZ credit card team, ANZ fraud team and Federal Police (this occurred further down the scam). They also asked similar questions about doing things online and also suspicious transactions which didn’t go through. They were persistent trying to get more and more information to perpetuate their scam and build trust. They also asked about maximum bank transfers that could be done and also what funds were available in ANZ and other banks. They sounded legitimate and gave reference numbers with each call. Many things didn’t add up such as not calling the bank other than using the phone numbers they provided (one was the number of the card team investigating officer and the other number was the ‘fraud team’). They argued it was an inside job for the fraudulent transactions and why Federal Police were involved and why usual public contact numbers couldn’t be used. The ‘bank’ also gave out the Federal Police case number as well. Tge ‘bank’ could slso do phone transfers to the Federal Police’, direct to the investigating officer who could also, as it happens, transfer calls back to the ‘relevant bank officers’. They were spinning a web to trap our neighbour in their scam. It is one of the more cunning and sophisticated ones I have heard of and got the neighbour to report it to the police and Scamwatch.
I suggest you call Westpac Cards Customer Service Call Centre on…
Contact us immediately on 1300 651 089, or if outside Australia +61 2 9155 7700.
to discuss the call you have had and to make sure it was them who made contact with you. If not, they should be able to assist you in relation to risks of fraudulent transactions should you have passed any information onto the callers.
