Australian CEO loses $44k in two emails

Lawrence*, a Melbourne father, is the Chief Executive Officer and owner of a regulatory compliance business that has spread throughout the East Coast.

He has a postgraduate degree and has previously invested in equities.

That’s why he’s speaking out after falling for a “sophisticated” investment scam that stole a large chunk of his family’s cash reserves, which he says could trick anyone.

“I guess I’m not stupid,” he told news.com.au. “I think I’m pretty smart.”

But he realized after putting thousands of dollars into it that he had lost his money with no chance of recovery.

“It was just a really harrowing experience. It was just so demanding, I couldn’t get over it,” he said.

The financially savvy businessman had found great success in the past investing his money in companies during their initial public offering (IPO) rounds and began looking for a broker who could help him with his latest venture.

Lawrence wanted to secure a stake in a US electric utility vehicle company called Rivian, which he knew would go public last November.

So the Victorian man started looking for ways to grab some Rivian stock.

Here he came across a so-called British company called Invystor, who passed him on to two different brokers.

“They arranged a call from this group called Berenson Capital,” he recalled.

“They had this very slick website claiming to be an Australian brokerage firm.”

He spoke to a man with a British accent named John Alexander, who explained how the whole process would work.

He ended up investing around $20,000 by transferring the money to a CBA bank account.

Around the same time, Invystor put him in touch with another brokerage firm called Kingsway Capital Limited.

Here he spoke to a woman named Catherine Willows, who also had a British accent.

“She said they cooped up some Rivian shares at the IPO, so I subsequently committed $24,655.”

This was done by wire transfer to an account over in the US.

Lawrence said he went through a rigorous vetting process with both companies, checking with ASIC that they had valid financial license numbers and also looking up reviews and investigating their UK counterparts.

The problem is that there really is a Kingsway Capital Limited, but it wasn’t.

“I felt really stupid for doing so much research,” Lawrence said.

Do you have a similar story? Get in touch | alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au

On the much-anticipated day of the Rivian Float, November 11, 2021, Lawrence heard nothing from either company.

“On the day of the IPO, I tried to call Berenson Capital and the number died,” he recalled.

“I tried calling John Alexander, he just left.

“On November 12th (that was the next day) I received an email saying her (Catherine’s) email address was deleted.”

He further learned that not only did he miss Rivian’s stock going public, but he also gave away $44,000 to scammers.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, which is its equivalent to ASIC, has since issued a warning that scammers are “cloning” Kingsway Capital.

“Almost all firms and individuals providing financial services in the UK are required to be authorized or registered by us,” they wrote.

“This company is not authorized or registered by us but have approached people in the UK claiming to be an authorized company.

“This is what we call a ‘clone company’… You can use the real company’s name, the ‘company reference number’ (FRN) that we gave the authorized company, or other details.”

Cybersecurity expert Nick Savvides, chief technology officer APAC at cybersecurity firm Forcepoint, also told news.com.au that there were a number of issues with Invystor.com, the website Lawrence originally leaked to the other scammers .

“This site has a number of red flags,” he told news.com.au.

These include the site which is accepting the registration of a legitimate financial company called Wealthstream Ltd which has not submitted its paperwork for three years and is about to be de-registered.

They also said that Invystor is a registered trademark but does not appear in the UK Trademark Register. Meanwhile, their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages only link to other content, which is “typical of scam sites, they only link to external news articles, meaning they don’t actually produce any content.”

They also had an associated website that had only been launched in 2021.

To make matters worse, Lawrence provided his passport to the fake financial firms so that he could verify his identity.

This means that the scammers now have his passport details and could open loans and credit accounts in his name.

Fortunately, he has since been able to recover half of his stolen money.

When Bendigo Bank made the wire transfer, they eventually refunded him the $24,000.

However, the rest of the money is beyond salvage more than a year later.

Mr Savvides believes these particular scams are “sophisticated” and “well equipped”.

He says it’s likely they had a group of people working together to steal large sums of money.

The money likely ended up abroad and he says could be part of an organized criminal gang.

*Name withheld for privacy reasons

alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au