- Exclusive
- National
- Investigation
Comedy legend Rod Quantock was told he’d been hacked. Minutes later, $30,000 was gone
By Tony Wright and Aisha Dow
Pioneers of Australian comedy Rod Quantock and Mary Kenneally had their legendary senses of humour brazenly dismantled when a bank impersonator took only minutes to steal $30,000 of their savings.
It was a few days before Christmas last year. Quantock had not long been discharged from hospital following a cardiac procedure, and was still recovering from anaesthetic, when he got a call from a man falsely claiming to be from Bendigo Bank’s fraud team.
Veteran comedian Rod Quantock.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“Your account has been hacked,” the conman said. “In order to save your account, we have set up another account for you to transfer funds to, in order to stop the scam.”
Not long after transferring the money — perhaps an hour later — Quantock remembers feeling a creeping sense that something was not right, and he contacted his local Bendigo Bank branch.
Quantock, who now lives on the aged pension along with wife Kenneally, was told the person he had spoken to was not a bank representative, and his money had been sent to an HSBC bank account.
“I could hear Rod in the back room talking to someone on the phone ... for a long time. Rod sounded very serious. A little bit alarming,” Kenneally said.
“Some time later he came in and told me what had happened.”
HSBC said that they were able to restrict the account that had received the money on the same day they were alerted by Bendigo Bank, however only a small proportion of the money — less than $3000 — could be retrieved.
In the modern age of cyber fraud, theirs is a familiar story.
An investigation by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald has found that banks have been unable to retrieve their customers’ stolen money even in instances where the victims have realised they’ve been scammed as it’s happening, or very soon after.
Criminals can quickly funnel stolen money through Australian-held accounts — known as mule accounts, then onwards into other accounts or cryptocurrency.
The victims hit a brick wall as these receiving banks often refuse to hand over information about the fate of their stolen money citing “privacy or confidentiality” reasons.
The day after the scam, Kenneally said she contacted HSBC trying to trace the stolen money.
“They refused to do anything as they could not ‘invade their customer’s privacy’,” she said.
The scam took on a particularly bitter edge because it happened while the couple was trying desperately to find a new home.
Unable to earn a living as artists during the COVID-19 pandemic — when pensioners and the arts community were denied JobSeeker payments — it had become necessary to sell their previous home.
Kenneally said she and Quantock thought long and hard about whether they should share their story.
“We eventually decided that of greater importance are the thousands of people in our and much worse positions who are shattered and without support from the very banks they have supported with their custom,” she said.
“We are so aware that there are many people like us who are feeling ashamed of being scammed.”
It wasn’t until Bendigo Bank was contacted about the case by this masthead last week, that the pair suddenly received a phone call telling them they’d be compensated fully for their remaining scam losses via a goodwill payment.
Mary Kenneally and Quantock during their performing days.
This experience of receiving a large reimbursement payment is not the norm, with data showing that average Australians continue to bear the bulk of losses from scams, worth at least $2.7 billion last year.
A 2023 report by Australia’s corporate regulator revealed that the country’s big four banks only reimbursed about 4 per cent of scam losses in the year to June 2022, while these banks collectively stopped 13 per cent of attempted scam payments.
Meanwhile, almost 200 Australian victims of a long-running HSBC bank impersonation scam are still fighting to receive compensation for a swindle cybercrime experts say should have been detected in real time.
The federal government is embarking on reforms through new industry codes they say will improve the performance of banks, telcos and social media platforms when it comes to preventing scams, and provide customer compensation if they fall short.
Australia’s banking industry has also promised changes through the Scam-Safe Accord.
“Under the Scam-Safe Accord there will be more friction to payment transactions to help better protect customers. This includes risk-based delays on transactions and additional warnings when a customer adds new payee, amends a payee or increases payment limits,” an Australian Banking Association spokesperson said.
Kenneally says she and Quantock have some simple questions that have received no answer:
“Why couldn’t our bank reverse the transaction? Or put a time delay on unusual payments?
“They gave us no advice on what to do. They don’t seem to care at all.”
A Bendigo Bank spokesperson said it had tightened transaction rules blocking high-risk payments to cryptocurrency exchanges, removed all links from SMS messages and significantly increased the size of its fraud prevention and response team.
Sunni Wan was a victim of a long-running scam targeting HSBC customers.Credit: Nikki Short
In the 2023 financial year, the bank said it stopped an average of about $105,000 worth of fraudulent transactions each day.
“It is important customers take steps to protect themselves and do not share their passwords or allow someone they don’t know or trust to log in to their computer remotely, as it is extremely difficult to recover money that has been transferred to scammers,” a spokesperson said.
“Bendigo Bank attempts to recover funds lost to scams wherever possible and it goes without saying when the bank is at fault, we will reimburse customers for the loss of funds.”
HSBC, the bank that received the suspected stolen funds, said it was “committed to continuous improvement to safeguard our customers”.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.