A MUM who devoted years of her life to the London Fire Brigade has been left devastated after losing her pension of £170,000 in a cruel scam.
Cath Mulalley, 55, decided to take out life insurance and invest her life savings after a surgery complication left her husband Carl disabled and unable to work.
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The pair have a 10-year-old daughter, and her future was at the forefront of their minds.
And despite going through a local bank branch to transfer £170,000 into what she thought was an investment fund, Cath was caught in a “sophisticated scam” and is battling to get her life savings back.
She told The Mirror: “Apart from sheer panic, it’s quite hard to describe how I feel.
“I have panic attacks about what I’m going to do because I just don’t know.”
The now-55-year-old left her job at the London Fire Brigade in 2008 when she and Carl moved to New Zealand.
She took with her the hefty pension she’d built up over her years committed to the fire service.
But, after Carl was left unable to work, the pair thought it would be wise to put money in a safe place for their daughter, Eva.
Cath had filled out an online form for insurance cover in June, so it came as no surprise when she picked up a call from a man claiming to be an investments advisor for Citibank in New Zealand a few days later.
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She then went to her local Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) branch and said staff completed the transfer of $325,000 NZD – £170,000 – to her new Citibank account with no questions asked.
But, Cath became suspicious when the scammers called her saying the money had not been received, despite her bank account showing up empty.
The former firefighter said she quickly rang her bank and asked where her money was if it wasn’t with Citibank or in her accounts.
Cath said she kept being put on hold, and transferred between people, until one man said he would call her back.
She said: “He finally called me back two days later and told me he had passed it to his manager because he thought something wasn’t right.
“A few days later they told me it was a scam.
“In the days after, I went into shock and worked back-to-back day and night shifts until I had a massive breakdown and was sent home.”
‘NOTHING THEY CAN DO’
After chasing down the recipient account, which turned out to be a legitimate business account in Australia taken over by scammers, BNZ was only able to retrieve £35,000 – or $67,000 NZD.
However, Cath says BNZ has now claimed “there is nothing they can do” to reimburse or retrieve the remaining money – despite failing to recognise the scam during the transfer.
In a letter to Cath, seen by The Mirror, BNZ confirm that one of their bankers helped to make the transfer on the branch iPad.
In the same note, BNZ claim they “do not presently have the capacity to match account numbers to the name of the account at an inter-bank level”.
But Cath says if BNZ had simply called the Citibank branch in Auckland to check the account number the scam “would never have happened”.
Now, Cath has been forced to start her own GoFundMe to try build her life savings back up – not only for their daughter but to renovate their home which is “falling apart”.
She said: “I don’t know if Carl will ever be able to go back to work again and I have lost nearly all my pension from the London Fire Brigade.
“I had always coped with living in the house because I knew one day we would renovate, but now we can’t afford to.
“I had a light at the end of the tunnel and now that has gone.”
‘SOPHISTICATED AND ELABORATE’
A spokesperson for BNZ claimed they had worked hard to recover as much of Cath’s money as they could.
The spokesperson told The Mirror: “We have thoroughly investigated the circumstances that led to this fraud and have complied with all obligations under New Zealand banking regulations.
“We do not believe we could have done more to prevent it.
“This sophisticated and elaborate scam was initiated when the customer unwittingly engaged with a scammer during an online search for financial services.
“This type of scam relies on people trusting that these seemingly legitimate online connections are what they say they are.
“Unfortunately, our customer was unknowingly intent on entering into a financial arrangement with a scammer well before going into our branch and asking our people to assist her in completing the transaction.
“The transaction was initiated by the customer, the information and paperwork provided and the conversation with our people in the branch, provided no evidence that the planned transaction was a scam.
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“The transfer was being made to a valid New Zealand bank account number and a valid bank branch address was supplied, as such, term deposit transfers like these are very common across the banking industry.
“When our staff asked the customer to call Citibank to confirm the transaction the customer relied on the contact details and relationship already established during the scam and called the scammer to validate the account.”
