Thirroul woman falls victim to scammers, ACCC finds Australia's losses grow to $3.1 billion

The Thirroul resident only transfers limited amounts of money to the bank account connected to her card in case it gets lost or stolen, and doesn't answer international calls at home.

But Mrs Walker recently fell victim to a wily scammer who managed to defraud her of $6000.

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Her story is one of many thousands, with the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission's latest scams report revealing that Australians' combined losses to scams last year totalled $3.1 billion - an 80 per cent increase on the previous year.

Mrs Walker was on holiday in Bali last month when she began receiving multiple phone calls from her bank asking if she had made certain purchases.

Each time she said she had not, so the bank said it would put a stop to the transactions.

Once back home, Mrs Walker received a phone call from a local number and the man on the other end, purporting to be from banking security, said they needed to sort out the issue.

Over the phone, the man walked her through a long process that involved her copying and pasting numbers he sent to her, going through each attempted transaction individually, and transferring funds in her own name to an account purportedly owned by the bank.

"It was so confusing... I was that frazzled," Mrs Walker said.

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The man first took Mrs Walker through this process on her Illawarra Credit Union Account, then said they needed to do the same for her Westpac account - something that really frightened her, as that held her life savings.

However, when Mrs Walker attempted to do as the man asked, Westpac declined the transaction.

At this point the man started to get frustrated, she said, and when she realised he could see what she was typing remotely, the alarm bell went off and she hung up the phone.

Mrs Walker then contacted Westpac, who confirmed they had stopped the payments which would have totalled thousands of dollars.

However, the scammer did get money from her Illawarra Credit Union account.

Mrs Walker believes the repeated calls she received asking about attempted purchases were a way of breaking down her defences so that when the scammer called to sort out the 'problem', she would go along with it.

The scammer also had plenty of information about her banking activity to gain her trust.

She received advice that her phone had most likely been hacked through unsecured WiFi in Bali.

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"No one's ever got anything out of me, but this was so incredibly clever," she said.

The ACCC report says bank transfers, like Mrs Walker's, were the most reported payment form last year, with losses as a result of this method increasing by 62.9 per cent on the previous year.

While reports of scam calls dropped, losses as a result of these still increased by over 40 per cent to $141 million.

Financial Services Minister and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones told the ABC the federal government had made anti-scam measures a priority.

The Whitlam MP said these included the establishment of a National Anti-Scams Centre, obligations on phone providers to filter out scam messages, and taking on the hackers themselves.

Mrs Walker said banks should be doing more to protect customers.

"It's their job to protect our money, at the end of the day," Mrs Walker said.

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