'It's your money they're after, protect it': Police warning amid eight arrests over alleged email scams

Alleged email hackers have been accused of stealing families' life savings, and fleecing hundreds of thousands of dollars from people who thought they were paying their bills.

A Current Affair was invited along by NSW Police during their week of action as they made eight arrests in Sydney's south west with officers recovering more than $1m.

Police and finance experts are urging Australians to do more to protect their money after seeing an increase in digital scams in recent times. 

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"It is your money that they're after, protect it," Commander of the Cybercrime Squad, Detective Superintendent Matthew Craft, told A Current Affair.

In the past 12 months criminals made $128 million by hacking business emails and tricking people into paying fake invoices.

Cyber-crime boss, Detective Superintendent Craft, showed A Current Affair an example of email hacking from earlier this year that derailed the sale of a property.

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"The victim was expecting it, the figures are all correct, but what the victim doesn't know is the account and BSB number have been changed. So apart from that, that is all legitimate," he explained.

"It's very difficult to identify, particularly in this case here, where it was expected, and the amounts, all what they expected to pay with an electronic transfer.

"It is a properly formulated email, it has an address, it has a header, time and date, and introduction. There's actual figures listed within the email there ... but it's the details down the bottom that are actually fraudulent."

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Detective Superintendent Craft said there are numerous ways hackers can intercept invoices before people see them in their accounts.

"Ultimately what they would do is they would send you some kind of phishing email, where they are after your credentials," he said.

"Once they have your username and password and have access to your emails, they're able to monitor your emails."

On the streets of Sydney's south west police knocked on the door of one man who they had been watching for more than six months.

Police have been investigating his alleged role in a sophisticated global email scam.

"A particular individual in this house, we believe, has obtained just under $760,000," a police officer on the scene, told A Current Affair reporter Dimity Clancey.

"The victims were in the process of completing a property settlement. They received a notice to transfer funds they did that, but unfortunately those funds were misdirected."

Police allege soon after the funds appeared in the man's account, security footage captured him turning the $750,000 into gold bullion.

The following day, in their week of action, police pounced again, while filing into a Sydney unit block full of COVID-19 cases.

Police alleged their next suspect, "has received funds into his bank account. He has then on at least 44 occasions, attended a registered crypto exchange and exchanged to crypto currency".

Australian Banking Association CEO, Anna Bligh said a staggering 92 per cent of Aussies have been targeted by scammers in the past year.

"The ability for banks to get ahead of scammers requires big investment and they've done $19 billion in the past year," she said.

One of those investments has been in pay ID which is a system that uses your mobile number for banking, instead of your BSB and account number.

"At the moment there is a gap between your BSB and the payment and that's where scammers get into the middle, the pay ID system closes that gap and I can only encourage more businesses to talk to your bank," Ms Bligh said.

Scam numbers are yet to go down since the pay ID system has been rolled out.

"Every time police bust a scam ring, every time banks get ahead and close the door to one particular scam, there'll be another scam somewhere else," she said.

But the advice remains that victims should call police as soon as they discover they've been hacked.

"The longer it takes to report, the less chance that we have of freezing the funds," Detective Superintendent Craft said.