$500,000 ... that's not right

MARK TAYLOR/Waikato Times

MONEY TRAIL: Student Sarah-Lee Ryan found $500,000 in her bank account after responding to a scam email.

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A Hamilton student has been drawn into an internet money-laundering scam by a mystery $500,000 deposit which has led to her bank freezing her account.

Sarah-Lee Ryan, a 20-year-old Wintec journalism student, has no access to her bank account after ASB froze it due to the deposit of a sum believed to be close to half a million dollars.

Miss Ryan had no idea who put the money in her bank account, but believed she was being used as a "mule" by scammers who hoped she would forward the sum on to them after taking a percentage for herself.

A user on the www.seek.co.nz job-search website, Miss Ryan received an email on Wednesday which claimed it was from the site, gave details of potential work and asked for her bank account details. It appeared to come from a usual Seek email address. "To me, it looked legitimate," she said.

The email she replied to looked exactly like previous emails from Seek, and did not have the usual spelling and grammar mistakes which are often the telltale signs of scam emails.

She replied with her bank account details which she had sent to the website's operators in the past but soon after realised the email might have been part of an internet scam.

By 10pm on Wednesday, ASB had frozen her account, and the next morning she was contacted by an ASB bank fraud investigator asking how the substantial sum of money had turned up in her account.

Miss Ryan said she was also concerned by the pushy and demanding questions put to her by the ASB staff member, who informed her she was part of the apparent internet scam.

"She was very abrupt with me, implying I was the `middleman' in the scam."

The ASB staffer told Miss Ryan the bank wanted to "reverse" the money back into the Westpac bank account from which it had come. Westpac had advised other banks of the scam, Miss Ryan was told.

"If I'd spent any of it, I'd have been part of the laundering."

Miss Ryan said she was vigilant about her internet use. She was expecting an email from the scammers yesterday asking her to deposit the funds into another bank account - something she would not be doing.

Once she had received the expected email from the scammers, she would be forwarding it to police.

Miss Ryan felt ASB had not handled the situation well and was concerned the Seek website was not secure.

No one from Seek could be reached for comment but the company's website gave tips for users suspecting a scam or fraudulent behaviour. It suggested users did not respond to the email, made sure anti-virus software was up to date and reported the email to seek.co.nz immediately. It also told users to contact their bank if they had supplied bank account or credit card details.

ASB head of corporate communications Debby Bell said it was normal for the bank to freeze accounts in such cases and ASB would work with clients to give them access to their money.

- © Fairfax NZ News