Bank employee saves elderly customer from losing millions to scam by asking one simple question

We live in a world where technology has taken center stage. However, the downside of technology lies in its misuse. Recently, a 70-year-old woman from Australia was on the verge of getting financially scammed. But, her bank representative stepped in and prevented the old lady from losing millions, reports GoodNews Network.

This incident took place in Australia's Westpac Bank. A woman in her 70s went to the bank's Liverpool branch for assistance for canceling her home insurance as she was planning on selling her home. On the opposite side of the table, assisting her was Mariana Karbowski, a bank teller, who seemed rather unconvinced by her client's needs. It was at that very moment she decided to dig deep into the matter.

To understand the whole situation better, Karbowski asked some questions to get a better diagnosis of the matter. In her mini-investigation, she got an unsatisfactory answer that the woman needed to "help her son." As soon as she heard the old woman's story, she cordially invited the woman into one of the personal workspaces, where Karbowski investigated more. She found out the real reason the woman was going to make one of the largest financial decisions of her life. The woman needed to free her "boyfriend" from an overseas prison. 

Karbowski grew suspicious the moment she heard of prison and her next step was to stop this lady from falling victim to a financial scam. Talking about how she dealt with the matter, Karbowski said, "My next question was, please tell me the last time he took you out for a coffee, and she said, ‘Actually, never, we met online'," she was quoted as saying by Channel 9 News. It didn’t take long for the teller to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. For Karbowski, this scam was an ugly reminder of her father, who was scammed out of millions.

Without any pause, she did a reverse image search on Google of the man the woman claimed was her internet boyfriend. While doing so, she discovered that many of the photos the client received from the man were online but with different names, hence her suspicion was in the right place.

"We cried together and I walked her to the police station to report it," Karbowski said. "We care and when we see those red flags, we act." The old woman was lucky to have landed on the doorstep of the bank, as these days, banks take online transactions very seriously and have set up a screening process before any transaction. Australia's Westpac Bank trains its employees to poke questions at anyone engaging in strange transactions. This has come in handy in cases where people have not verified the receiver on the other side and has aided people who are not very tech-savvy.

This article originally appeared 5 months ago.