LOTTERY SCAM

A business owner in Parnell has been tricked out of more than $1000 after being targeted by an on-going scam in which victims are offered gift vouchers from Countdown supermarkets. But Fashion designer Natalie Chan has taken matters into her own hands, outing the alleged scammers on social media. She believes the offenders were two customers who visited her shop yesterday. When reviewing security camera footage Ms. Chan noticed one of the customers take her wallet from her bag before leaving.

Shortly after they left Ms. Chan received a phone call, she did not know at this point her wallet had been stolen. The caller told Ms. Chan she had won a $500 prize from Countdown and needed to provide a security pin to verify the prize. After giving the woman a random combination of numbers, Ms. Chan was told they would verify the prize. "I got a call back 5 minutes later. She politely and professionally apologies [sic] for the inconvenience and asked for more numbers as they said it did not match my One card," she posted on Facebook.

After further questioning Ms. Chan finally gave up her bank pin number. It was only this morning she realized she had been scammed after a concerned friend contacted her. "Sure enough, l checked my bank account and my EFTPOS account is all cleaned out." Ms. Chan has posted security camera images on social media, in an attempt to stop it from happening again. Several other retailers told Ms. Chan that the scam has been happening since January. A neighbouring Parnell shop owner told her two women who appear in her security footage have been seen around the community. Ms. Chan says she feels stupid and angry about the incident. She has contacted the police but does not feel they are giving the matter the attention it deserves. "It is just infuriating. It is not just me, it is someone else. Police have got to get onto this; does someone have to be killed to get police moving? I want justice and victory," says Ms. Chan.  She has the names of the two women allegedly involved and has taken her security footage to the police, who have stated their investigation is on-going and they are following several lines of inquiry. Countdown says it is not running a promotion offering grocery hampers and it would never ask customers to give out their confidential pin numbers.