Second round of despair for fraud victim
Kiwi gets the documentation she needs just six days after deadline for compensation closes, and NZ police ‘didn’t come to the table’. Tom Pullar-Strecker reports.
The Kiwi victim of a $250,000 Nigerian romance scam thought she might have a chance to turn her life around when she found out in February that Western Union was paying out hundreds of millions to fraud victims such as herself to settle a US investigation.
But Vivienne Keane said she instead faced weeks of frustration trying to prove her identity to Western Union from the Australian caravan park she had moved to, and the information the company gave her – which she needed for her claim – was incorrect.
Her hopes of receiving tens of thousands of dollars in compensation were dashed when Western Union finally gave her the documentation she needed – six days after the deadline for compensation claims closed.
David Lacey, who heads Brisbane-based charity IDCARE – which has helped more than 1000 Australians apply for compensation from Western Union – said Keane had been ‘‘revictimised’’.
He questioned why New Zealand police hadn’t provided the same assistance to Kiwi victims such as Keane, that Australian authorities had provided to Australians who filed claims.
Keane’s trials began when she fell victim to a romance scam in 2011 and was tricked into sending money to Lagos, Nigeria, via Western Union.
The scammer, who spent more than a year earning her trust, struck at a vulnerable time in Keane’s life, in the wake of her husband leaving her and her mother and father dying.
She had given up hope of recovering any of the money
‘‘When we hear from victims of these crimes, you can almost guarantee that if you are not harmed by the crime, you will be by the response.’’ David Lacey, managing director of cyber-security charity IDCARE
until February, when she learned from a Stuff report that Western Union had set up a US$586 million (NZ$$849m) compensation fund.
The fund, a world-first, was established to settle a joint investigation by the United States Federal Trade Commission, the US Justice Department (DOJ) and the US Postal Inspection Service, which had accused Western Union of ‘‘aiding and abetting wire fraud’’ by turning a blind eye to scammers.
Keane said she needed to have an email from Western Union ‘‘with all their headings and paperwork and every Money Transfer Control Number’’ (MTCN) so she could lodge a claim.
But Western Union would not initially believe who she was because she had changed her name, and then required a permanent rather than a caravan-park address.
‘‘I had to wait until I got into a house in April. All they reckoned they could find was $25,000. They couldn’t find two transfers of $100,000.’’
Keane said Western Union received all the information it needed from her on April 19, but it took until May 25 for it to send the MTCNs and there was a wrong date on a £2000 (NZ$3850) deposit. She had been told all the information needed to be correct before she could file a claim.
Western Union fixed the error after she pointed it out, but not until June 5, six days after the May 31 deadline for claims expired, she said.
‘‘I have had a really tough time with Western Union. It has been so hard to get any information out of them and I am really upset about the whole situation because I could at least have got $25,000 back, but no, I’m getting zero.
‘‘I tried and tried, without being annoying, to get my money back. I asked and asked and asked for the information and it was a hurdle every single time.
‘‘I didn’t have a computer; all my documentation was still in storage in boxes which I couldn’t get to for a while because we had a flood up here. I had to try and get things photocopied.’’
Western Union global regulatory and risk communications leader Claire Treacy, based in Colorado, said ‘‘unfortunately due to privacy reasons, we do not want to go into the reasons for the delay in supplying the necessary validation documents to Ms Keane’’.
‘‘We encourage Ms Keane to contact the DOJ claims administrator to pursue that claim or ask any questions, including questions about whether the deadline for submitting a claim has past,’’ she said.
Lacey said IDCARE had anticipated that getting information from Western Union would be an issue.
‘‘You do a ‘privacy request’ to them and cross your fingers and toes that they get it to you in time. We approached Western Union and asked them if there was a more efficient process but they couldn’t come to the party.’’
Lacey said it had successfully persuaded Australian financial intelligence agency Austrac to supply the necessary information to Australian victims from the records it collected on international money transfers as part of its anti-money laundering duties.
That meant few Australians had to go down the privacyrequest route, he said.
IDCARE worked hard to get the New Zealand police, who are responsible for anti-money laundering record-keeping in New Zealand, to provide the same assistance to Kiwis that Austrac had, he said.
‘‘We couldn’t get them to come to the table. Whether they were prohibited by law or didn’t have the ‘intel’, I don’t know, but in Australia we didn’t have the problem.’’
Police national high-tech crime group manager Kelly Knight acknowledged that after police became aware of the Western Union reparations scheme, it searched its systems and identified thousands of records in which Western Union was mentioned.
‘‘The Financial Intelligence Unit previously identified a number of people who had wired money through Western Union but determining whether the transactions were made by money mules or victims was difficult,’’ she said.
‘‘It was decided that a press release was the best option.’’
A police media release issued on January 25 drew attention to the compensation scheme and the May 31 deadline, and advised victims to visit Western Union’s website to lodge a claim.
Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Dalziel said police would only have received reports when a money transfer had been highlighted as suspicious or if a complaint had been made.
Police will be in contact with IDCARE to ‘‘discuss the issues raised’’, he said.
Lacey said the claims that had been submitted to Western Union from scam victims around the world exceeded the US$586m on offer. ‘‘That gives you a sense of how many people are caught up in these sorts of scams.’’
Keane’s experience was the typical ‘‘journey for victims’’, he said.
‘‘When we hear from victims of these crimes, you can almost guarantee that if you are not harmed by the crime, you will be by the response. I feel for people like Vivienne because she has been further victimised and further traumatised through a process that no doubt we could improve.’’