Jacob Weitering has fallen victim to a sophisticated banking scam, fleecing him of a significant amount of money.
But the Carlton star has admirably stepped forward to speak about his experience in a bid to protect others from the scourge of scams.
Weitering six months ago received text messages from a number purporting to represent his bank, the National Australia Bank.
So elaborate was the scam, that the criminals inserted their text messages into the same conversation thread as Weitering’s genuine bank messages.
The defender didn’t act on those texts, but then received a call from a phone number appearing to use NAB identification. Weitering then spoke with someone acting as a NAB employee before depositing money into a fraudulent account.
Weitering never got the money back.
The Blues’ best and fairest winner was understandably embarrassed by the saga, but courageously agreed to sit down with NAB CEO Ross McEwan for a video aimed at educating people about scams and what to do to protect yourself.
NAB, which is actively trying to protect its customers from scammers, made the Weitering-McEwan video available to its 30,000 staff on Monday.
The bank and the player hope that his situation will serve as a wake-up call to those who have grown familiar with deleting, or not reading, typical bank-issued communication.
While scammers have been pretending to call or text from financial institutions for several years, impersonation scams have become increasingly sophisticated in recent times and seen people lose their homes and life savings.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last month warned new technology was being used to make scam calls look like they were coming from the bank’s legitimate phone number, while also allowing scam texts to appear in the same conversation thread as genuine messages.
Australians lost almost half a billion dollars to scammers in the first nine months of last year – a 90 per cent increase in losses compared to the same period the year before, according to research commissioned by the ACCC.