A small business is now on the brink of collapse after scammers ordered tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock using stolen credit cards.
Roland Sharman, 80, has operated Sail Shade World, a DIY sail shade company which ships internationally, for 18 years but he now may be forced to close up shop.
Mr Sharman sent $36,000 worth of stock to a customer in the Middle East in July before he realised that they had purchased the sails using stolen credit cards.
By August he noticed several ‘chargebacks’ had sapped the payments out of his ANZ business account despite the sails already being long gone.
The original owners of the credit cards that were used to purchase the sails had began disputing the fraudulent transactions which left Mr Sharman with nothing.
ANZ is refusing to help Mr Sharman, saying he is technically at fault because he left himself exposed to the fraud by not using 3DSecure – a crucial cybersecurity measure which would have protected him from the scammers.
Mr Sharman – who has no pension or superannuation – is now worried that he might be left with nothing.
‘I don’t know if we’re going to survive this,’ Mr Sharman told news.com.au.
Roland Sharman, 80, lost $36,000 after scammers used stolen credit cards to buy stock from his small business
A customer in the Middle East placed 21 orders for Mr Sharman’s indoor sail shades in July but by August the original owners of the credit cards had begun recouping their own lost money
‘It has rocked the boat, in terms of cash flow. We’re a small business. It’s a totally steady, nice little cash machine, we don’t [usually] have to worry about anything.
‘We didn’t think we needed to put money aside.’
Prior to this Mr Sharman had few issues with bad payments as his business expanded to over 50 countries and he moved to Vienna, Austria, to be closer to his family.
Mr Sharman said ANZ’s response to the scammers was to put the culpability back onto the businessman.
ANZ had previously raised his transaction fees from 1.8 per cent to 3 per cent for added security once it began taking on so many international orders.
But the small businessman is adamant that he had no idea that 3DSecure was available to him or that he was expected to be using it.
A representative for the bank however told him that it was not their ‘responsibility to look after your security’, Mr Sharman told Daily Mail Australia.
The cost of adding 3DSecure to his processing fee would have been five cents per transaction, which Mr Sharman said he would have happily paid if only he had known about it.
‘This was completely avoidable,’ he said. ‘They increased our rate and said it was because of the complexity of cybersecurity for overseas business. What for?’
Mr Sharman estimated the increased fees cost his business hundreds of thousands of dollars over its life, but there was no protection in place when he needed it.
After back-and-forth communication with ANZ representatives to resolve the issue went nowhere, Mr Sharman filed an official complaint with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) on August 16.
Mr Sharman’s bank, ANZ, is refusing to help him recover the lost funds because he was not using a crucial cybersecurity feature that the 80-year-old did not even know existed
Mr Sharman has since launched a GoFundMe to help recoup some of the funds he had lost from the scam.
He also hopes to start a movement to force banks to accept responsibility for cybercrimes on their systems, and for courts to give customers more protection.
‘There should be a push for legislation that would stop this happening,’ Mr Sharman said.
‘As a bank you have a fiduciary responsibility, you shouldn’t allow your customer to be exposed when there is is the way for you to keep them from being exposed.’
An ANZ Worldline Payment Solutions spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that 3D Secure would ‘need to be enabled by the merchant’s gateway provider’.
‘3D Secure is a security protocol used by payment gateways to authenticate transactions made online using credit and debit cards,’ the spokesperson said.
‘In this case, ANZ Worldline Payment Solutions isn’t the gateway provider.
‘ANZ Worldline Payment Solutions does however provide all customers with information about 3D Secure through operating guides, our website and proactive communications, and encourages them to confirm 3D Secure is available from their gateway if using a third party provider.’
