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In short:
Harriet Spring was "groomed" by a man claiming to be from ING Bank, then handed over $1.6 million of her mother's money. She says change to the banking system is needed now.
Federal Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones says banks, social media giants and telcos all need to work together.
What's next?
Bolstered codes of practice for all three industries are set to come into place by the end of the year.
Harriet Spring's mother Elaine died 10 days ago, but the $1.6 million she accumulated over her 95-year life is nowhere to be seen.
"What she thought she had produced in her lifetime won't go to her family," said Ms Spring.
In February, Harriet Spring helped her mother sell her home that had been in the family for three generations.
After the sale, she was called by a man claiming to be from ING Bank, who had what Ms Spring described as a "posh" English accent.
"He told me he was from the ING term deposit section, and coincidentally, I was looking for a term deposit for my mother's money."
After months of regular phone calls from the scammer, a process Ms Spring saw as a form of "grooming", Ms Spring deposited her mother's $1.6 million into a Westpac account.
She never saw the money again.
"The money was stolen," she said.
"People are going to say boohoo, we lost our intergenerational wealth, but this money isn't going to good deeds or a charity.
"The fact is, it doesn't belong to anyone else other than my mother. And it's gone."
Ms Spring has confirmed the money, which was set to be distributed amongst 15 family members, has not been recouped.
"It's the difference of people getting businesses off the ground, buying first homes, I myself will have to work for another 10 years beyond what I had hoped to work.
"My mother was an Order of Australia medallist for services to charity. This isn't the legacy she deserved."
Dispute over scam stats: are they going down?
Australians made more than 600,000 scam reports last year, reporting losses of $2.7 billion overall.
Despite the number of reported scams increasing, the amount lost in 2023 was down compared to 2022, when Australians lost a record $3.1 billion.
The federal government has claimed this as a win, saying this is the first time in six years that scam losses have decreased year-on-year.
But there is disagreement about whether the federal government's strategy is placing enough responsibility on the banking sector to stamp out scams.
Consumer groups and victims have called on the Australian government to follow the UK, where a new scheme is set to force banks to compensate scam victims.
It is a cause Harriet Spring supports wholeheartedly — she thinks if she was scammed in the UK, she would probably have been able to recoup some of the money she lost.
At the National Press Club this week, Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones was asked multiple times why he was pursuing a code of conduct system to stamp out scams, instead of a UK-style compensation model.
He said he was not convinced the UK model would be more effective, and argued it also was not fair.
"There are many players within the scam ecosystem, telecommunications companies, social media platforms and banks.
"Some of them are some of the biggest companies in the world — our big four banks are wealthy and they make a lot of profit and they should make a contribution to uplifting the standards and compensating victims."
"But if you look at the market capitalisation of some of the players in the social media area, who are publishing the scams, taking advertising revenue from the scams, have some of the best IT available in the world, and you are saying it's a fairer, better and more effective system that we hold someone like the Broken Hill credit union accountable for a scam which propagated and published on a social media platform, [and] they have made money out of, but, it's not the responsibility of the social media platform to do anything about it? I'm sorry, I just don't agree."
Banks 'pile on the injustice' to their customers, says consumer advocate
But figures from consumer watchdog the ACCC suggest only 6 per cent of reported scams in 2023 began on social media.
Stephanie Tonkin, chief executive of advocacy group the Consumer Action Law Centre, says banks "pile on the injustice" facing scammed customers by denying responsibility for refunds.
"Instead of accepting responsibility … [they] blame their customers who pay them to keep their money safe from increasingly sophisticated crimes and deception," she said.
"The onus continues to be on the customer to avoid being scammed against malignant forces over which they have no control and it's exasperating banks offer little help."
Mr Jones's approach has the support of banking lobby groups.
Anna Bligh, chief executive of the Australian Banking Association, which represents banks including Australia's four largest, said: "Winning the war against scammers can only be achieved through a collective effort across the economy, including from government, banks, telecommunications companies and social media platforms.
"Focusing liability on one industry, such as banks, risks undermining the success of an entire scams chain approach."
Ms Bligh said Australian banks had scam protection measures that were "among the best in the world" and noted scams were reducing at a faster rate in Australia than in the UK.
"There is a good reason why no other country in the world has adopted a UK-style reimbursement model."
Mr Jones told the press club there were a number of reforms slated for the banking system, including a "payee confirmation" reform that will add another layer of security to transactions.
This measure was recommended by the ACCC in 2022, and is set to be in place by the end of 2025 provided legislation passes parliament.
It's not the only measure the federal government is taking.
It's also spending $86 million on a national effort to prevent scams, and has created a national centre to report scams and distribute information to banks, law enforcement and vulnerable communities.
But for Harriet Spring, who points out it's the banks that ultimately facilitate the transfer of funds, that's not good enough.
"I mean, after all, what are the banks there for, if not to keep your money secure?" she said.
ABC