Queensland great-grandmother calls out bank for failing to stop hackers from draining savings account

A Queensland great-grandmother is searching for answers after she claims her bank failed to stop hackers from draining almost $60,000 from her savings account.

Deslie Harvey was caring for her sick husband in hospital when an Australian-based hacker stole her identity and raided $57,000 from her Macquarie Bank account.

The bank allowed seven illegal transactions to occur in less than 30 minutes, before eventually restricting the account due to 'unusual activity'.

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"I was horrified because the whole account had been drained of everything even to the interest ... there was nothing much left in the account at all," Harvey said.

One year on from the identity theft, Harvey said she hasn't been able to get "any answers of how it all happened".

Authorisation codes were sent to her phone for each illegal transaction but with the hacker having control of her mobile, that failed to provide any protection.

Macquarie was only able to recover $4623 from an external bank, despite the 79-year-old raising the alarm as soon as she was notified.

"Well I think Macquarie should be able to admit that they didn't act as well as what they should have and didn't act quick enough," Harvey said.

The scale of the identity fraud hit home when several bank cards arrived at her home that she did not order, including one in another person's name.

She also discovered an attempt to purchase $8000 dollars worth of jewellery on her credit card and $15,000 worth of mobile phones on eBay, which were both declined.

Further attempts to withdraw money from Westpac and Judo Bank were also stopped by their anti-fraud teams.

Compounding her pain, Harvey's husband also died in hospital.

To make her devices safe again, Harvey used cyber security service I've Been Hacked.

I've Been Hacked senior cyber security engineer Myles Larden said his company has seen a sharp increase in phone hacking.

He stressed the importance of keeping your phone's pin code secure.

"Once they've got access to the phone, they've got access to absolutely everything," Larden said.

"They only need to slip up once to a seemingly innocent party and then have that pin number and once they've got access to the phone, they've got access to absolutely everything."

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Larden believes Macquarie Bank needs to update its own security measures.

"There were four banks involved in her case and three of the banks actively stopped all of the transactions and clawed back anything that was taken except one bank," he said.

A Macquarie Bank spokesperson said in a statement it wouldn't "comment on individual matters" but it has "a series of robust fraud and scam controls to protect customer accounts" including "extensive alert systems and multi-factor authentication processes."

Queensland Police are investigating the hacking event.

It is believed a person known to one of Harvey's family members is their main focus.

Harvey said she has now accepted a compensation offer that is a fraction of what she lost.

"I think it's quite scary these days, nothing seems to be really secure," Harvey said.

FULL MACQUARIE BANK STATEMENT

While we would not compromise the privacy of our customers by commenting on individual matters, Macquarie has in place a series of robust fraud and scam controls to protect customer accounts.

This includes extensive alert systems and multi-factor authentication (MFA) processes to verify and authorise account activity from customers.

Customers should never share sensitive login information with anyone, this includes account and device passwords or passcodes to their online and mobile banking.

If a customer thinks they may have had their log in information compromised, we encourage them to contact us immediately.