Australian citizen Sherif Saeed has told SBS Arabic24 that his life has been "destroyed" after falling victim to a phone scam call where people pretending to be ATO agents warned him to pass over thousands of dollars or face jail time.
He ended up losing $9000 in the scam, but it could have been much worse.
It began when he received a call on the afternoon of November 30, from what he described as “an electronic message,” which warned that police officers would issue a warrant for his arrest if he didn't pay back the money he owed.
Mr Saeed said the message claimed that charges had been filed against him and that each could be rectified with payment.
He said the message claimed that the charges related to a mistake relating to his tax file number and must be rectified within 24 hours from the time of the phone call.
They also claimed that failure to comply would result in a five-year prison sentence and a threat to deport him back to Egypt.
The message directed him to contact another number, where he spoke to people pretending to be ATO agents.
Mr Saeed said he completely believed the threats made in the phone call.
“I was at work and extremely exhausted. I didn’t know where this phone call was coming from. He was telling me, I will be arrested and the police will be at my home in 24 hours," he said.
"I couldn’t think of anything else but my life was destroyed. I couldn’t even think that I was an Australian citizen. How could they send me back?”
Mr Saeed said the scammers told him he'd be arrested if he alerted people at work or family of what was happening.
He then was instructed to drive for the next six hours, visiting more than 15 Woolworths supermarkets, to purchase Google Play and iTunes cards as instructed.
After every store, he was told to sit in his car, scratch the cards out and read the numbers to the scammers.
He said he chose to visit different stores because employees and management became suspicious as he was buying cards in the amounts of thousands of dollars.
At a Woolworths supermarket in Bankstown, a manager stopped him and asked for him for a reason for buying so many cards, at which point the scammer intervened immediately and instructed Mr Saeed to leave the store.
When he asked the scammer why he couldn't tell the store employees that he was "rectifying his mistake” with the ATO, he was told that the employees receive rewards for identifying those with “tax trouble” and had they identified him, he would be arrested.
Mr Saeed said he was so distressed and exhausted from the ordeal that he broke down into tears while on the phone with the scammer.
After his ordeal, he called his friends and told them about what happened and he was advised by many that it all sounded very suspicious.
He reported the incident to the police on that same night and filed a report to the ATO two days later.
When asked about what the authorities said to him, Mr Saeed said: “They didn’t promise anything. They said they’ll investigate and gave me a case number. I don’t expect my money will come back."
He also said that the scammers asked him for an additional $5000 as a deposit in case he fell into future troubles with the ATO didn't press further when he told them had no money left in his account.
ATO warning
The ATO issued a warning about the various scams in November, saying that more than $800,000 had been fleeced during that month.
More than 37,000 reports were lodged with the ATO in November alone, according to a media release, with one person losing more than $236,000 to between June and November.
Assistant Commissioner Kath Anderson said the ATO saw an increase in scam phone calls, especially those using software that resembles a legitimate phone number to disguise the caller’s true identity.
“The ATO does not project our numbers using caller ID. You can be confident that if there is a number displayed in your caller ID, it isn’t the ATO,” Ms Anderson said.
Ms Anderson urged people to be aware of scammers pretending to be ATO agents.
“Taxpayers should be wary of any phone call, text message, email or letter about a tax refund or debt, especially if you weren’t expecting it."
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