The first home buyers saved and never ordered avocado toast – but their dream became a nightmare, one that’s happening to more and more Australians.
Jessica Greentree and Will Clinton never once ordered avocado toast, saving almost every cent of their wages to buy their first home near Jess’s beloved horses, Jay and Oakey, in semi-rural Camden in NSW.
“Losing that money has been absolutely devastating,” said Clinton, a draftsman, adding the couple can’t afford to move into their home and need to rent it out to recover from the financial loss. They also had to pay a higher mortgage interest rate, due to taking out an investor loan instead of an owner-occupier loan.
“I’ve seen break into email, and then they suck all the emails out, and they look for keywords, you know ‘contract’ or ‘sale’ or whatever and then they continue to sit and wait until the right time to send an email pretending to be the solicitor, going, ‘Hey, these are the payment instructions’ and they’ve copied and pasted previous emails and footers that they’ve received, so it looks legitimate,” he says.
Levin Salaberry and his partner Tina Damcesvka lost $91,650 in a home-buying scam in October 2023, when a CommBank branch teller transferred money to another “mule” CommBank account that NSW Police have said was set up with a stolen identity.Salaberry’s bank recovered $44,971.22 between October 18, 2023 and June 12 this year, leaving him with a devastating $46,678.78 loss.
“I don’t own a computer. I don’t sit in an office and do emails. I don’t answer phone calls from people I don’t know,” the construction worker, says, explaining he copies and pastes every number that calls him into WhatsApp so he can see if the person has a legitimate profile and photo.
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