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Posted: 2023-09-30 22:42:25

Justin Williams isn't a cop, and he certainly doesn't work for Interpol, but in Port Fairy, Victoria, he's become the local scam buster.   

Through his IT business, Mr Williams has helped about 60 local scam victims over the past few years, saving people thousands of dollars.

"In the last three years, all of a sudden I'm getting all these calls [with people saying], 'I think I've been scammed, my computer's got a virus'," Mr Williams said.

"We've been going out and sorting them out, but it's gradually getting more and more."

Man with three computers in an office

Justin Williams at work in Port Fairy.(ABC South West Victoria: Emily Bissland)

Most of the calls come from his clients, who he's been wording up about cyber security over the years. 

"I always talk about the scams when I'm with them," he said.

"I might be setting up a computer and I'll say, 'What do you do if the phone rings?', and [if it's a suspect call] I'll make them say, 'Don't trust the person!'," he said.

His clients now call Mr Williams if they fear their computer may have been infiltrated by malware, or when someone calls claiming to be an official and asking for account passwords.

Low angle, a middle-aged man points to iphone held by older gent

Keith Millard says Justin Williams has taught him a lot about protecting himself from scams.(ABC South West Victoria: Emily Bissland)

After years of coaching by Mr Williams, Keith and Barb Millard now call him whenever they spot something alarming.  

"I click on the address and if it comes up with gobbledygook … I forward it to Justin and say, 'Is this dodgy?'," Mrs Millard said. 

"And he gets straight back to me [and says], 'Yes, it's dodgy. Don't open it, just delete'.

"He's opened our eyes. We question everything now, even bank emails or Telstra, we check everything before we open it."

Older woman's hands on keyboard and screen shows virus warning

Justin Williams shares a screenshot of a typical fake computer virus scam.(ABC South West Victoria: Emily Bissland)

Often, Mr Williams catches the scammers in the act, but sometimes he's too late.

"Most of the time we get them before they lose anything financially, but sometimes people have lost money," he said.

Recently, he received a call from an elderly woman whose life savings had been stolen via a fake malware cyber scam.

By the time Mr Williams arrived, the criminals had siphoned $30,000 from her accounts.

"She was left with $80 in her account and her family are lending her some money — it's so sad," he said.

Scams leave scars

The ABC has reached out to several of Mr Williams' clients, but they declined interviews, saying they felt embarrassed. 

Mr Williams said the pain caused by scams went beyond the financial.

"[One of my clients] is in her 80s — she was a really happy-go-lucky and a lovely, lovely person, and she was rung up by a scammer," he said.

"The guy was completely abusing her, he got another person to come on the phone, telling her she was stupid and he'd ruin her life and so on, and she had a heart attack while she was on the phone.

"Her husband called the ambulance — she was in hospital for a week.

"I've been to see her three times since and she's definitely deteriorated. 

"She hasn't been the same ever since."

Police 'can't do much'

Mr Williams started running "how to" classes when the first iPhone was announced and he realised personal technology was transforming so quickly that most people couldn't keep up with it.

A smiling middle-aged man helps an elderly lady with her iphone.

Justin Williams helps client Rosie, who has never been scammed, with her iPhone.(Supplied: Justin Williams)

Most of his clients are elderly and come from a generation who are often naturally trusting of authority and kind to strangers, even to people who call them out of the blue. 

"They'd say, 'I was talking to a nice man from the NBN, he's going to give me a discount'," Mr Williams said.

"He needed to go into my bank account to put the money into my account, he's going to call back."

In such a case, Mr Williams would rush out to the client's home to prevent the inevitable theft, sometimes talking to the scammer himself on speaker to prove to his client the "nice man" was a fraud.

Two men in IT labelled black polar fleece jumpers and caps stand on beach path

Justin Williams, right, and his colleague Florian Lindemann.(Supplied: Justin Williams)

He said he stepped into the role of "scam buster" as no-one else was doing it, and he now employs another IT expert, Florian Lindemann, to cope with the growing demand.  

"It's a hard one because the crimes are so big and [for] the local police, it's not in their scope," Mr Williams said. 

"The police can say, 'OK, we can go through Scamwatch and report a scam', but really, they can't do much."

Banks decrease, scams increase

Mr Williams said branch closures in regional towns were contributing to the growing number of scam victims.

Over the past four years in Port Fairy, residents have gone from having four banks to just one. 

An historic street with commonwealth bank logo on front of building

Port Fairy's Commonwealth Bank branch closed mid-2021.(Supplied)

In 2019, the National Australia Bank closed its Port Fairy branch, and in 2021 the ANZ and Commonwealth Bank followed suit.

Now, there's just the Community Bank Port Fairy and District, part of Bendigo Bank, left. 

"Bank branches were the first point of contact for people who had been scammed — you'd always go to the bank first to see a real person," he said. 

"Older people are being forced online when they don't want to, as so many bank branches close."

a man chats to an older woman in front of a laptop in a study

Justin Williams shows Barb Millard how to avoid computer virus scams.(ABC South West Victoria: Emily Bissland)

Mr Williams said banks could be doing more to protect their most vulnerable customers.

"I wish the banks would hold the money for five days if it was over a certain amount and going overseas, or completely-out-of-the-ordinary transactions," he said.

Who will take responsibility?

In 2022, Australians lost $3.1 billion via scams — an 80 per cent increase on 2021.

Even though cyber scammers are committing a federal crime, often stealing huge amounts of money, scam victims rarely go to the police.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed that in 2021, only 57 per cent of people who experienced a scam reported it to an authority, and of them, most people contacted their bank rather than the police, who were only notified in 13.9 per cent of cases.

Whether there is a link between rising scams and regional branch closures is difficult to ascertain.

The topic of cyber security was absent from Treasury's 2021 Regional Banking Taskforce Issues Paper, which was commissioned to identify and assess the impact of bank branch closures in the regions.

But last week, the big four banks were grilled by senators in Canberra as part of a parliamentary inquiry into regional bank closures.

All four banks cited an overwhelming shift of customer preference for online banking, with most banks reporting more than 90 per cent of customers were now digital. 

Senator Linda White pointed out that digital fraud was on the rise and asked Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn whether banks were making people "more susceptible to fraud, particularly the elderly and others less au fait with scams" by pushing customers online.

Mr Comyn said customers were choosing digital banking, rather than being forced into it by regional branch closures. 

More than 1,200 bank branches have closed in Australia over the past six years.

Victims targeted more than once

Mr Williams said a lot of his clients had developed a distrust for humanity.

"Every time the phone rings, they'll get scared, terrified of a scam," he said.

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