Teagan Conn, a 31-year-old mother of four from Echuca in Victoria, lost $13,000 from her savings account after responding to a scam call while on vacation. The caller, posing as a Bendigo Bank employee, convinced her that suspicious activity had occurred and tricked her into providing security codes and personal information. Within 80 minutes, the scammer used this data to purchase Australia Post gift cards. When Conn reported the incident, Bendigo Bank determined it was not liable for the loss because she had provided secure access codes. The bank later offered a $5,000 goodwill payment, but Conn remains unsatisfied with the handling of her case.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-09-22,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
Story summary
Teagan Conn, a 31-year-old mother of four from Echuca, Victoria, lost $13,000 from her savings account after receiving a scam call while on holiday in Queensland. The caller pretended to be from the Bendigo Bank fraud team and convinced Conn to provide security codes and identification details, enabling the scammer to purchase Australia Post gift cards with the stolen funds within 80 minutes. Despite reporting the incident to the bank, Bendigo Bank did not hold itself liable for the loss, stating that customers should not share passwords or allow unknown individuals remote access to their devices due to difficulty in recovering transferred money.
Written for “Phone Scam Losses” on 2026-10-04,
grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.
A Victorian mother of four has revealed how she lost $13,000 from her savings account after providing her details to a scammer posing as a Bendigo Bank employee.
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she → reveal → employee
Teagan Conn, from Echuca, was enjoying a family holiday at a Queensland theme park when she lost the money in the space of just 80 minutes.
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she → enjoy → minutes
The 31-year-old received a call from a man claiming to be from the bank's fraud team and was falsely told that suspicious transactions had been made from her account.
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transactions → receive → account
She said the scam appeared convincing as he already had her name, date of birth, mobile number and home and email addresses.
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he → say → birth
Ms Conn was also told that she needed to follow the caller's instructions to prevent unauthorised purchases.
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she → tell → purchases
She provided him the security code that was sent to her phone as well as a photo of her licence to supposedly confirm her identity.
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that → provide → identity
Those details were enough to allow the scammer to access her Bendigo Bank account and spend $13,000 on Australia Post gift cards, according to Ms Conn.
When Ms Conn reported the incident to the bank, it acknowledged that scammers often pose as bank fraud staff.
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scammers → allow → staff
'When conducting cold calling scams, the scammers phone customers and appear to have previous knowledge (generally falsified), but convincing in detail, to engineer the call to align with their claim to be from the Bank's fraud or cyber security team,' Bendigo Bank wrote in a letter.
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Bank → conduct → letter
A Victorian mother of four has revealed how she lost $13,000 from her savings account after providing her details to a scammer posing as a Bendigo Bank employee
'
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she → reveal → employee
In cases of disputed transactions, the bank must review and weigh up the available information to decide what occurred, based on what the information shows.
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information → dispute → what
The Bank will place more weight on contemporaneous documents, being documents that are created at the time events occurred.'
The bank ultimately found that it was not liable for the loss.
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it → place → loss
'I am satisfied that the bank is not liable for your loss,' the letter said.
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letter → say → loss
'This is because the disputed transactions could not have been made without the use of secure codes that were sent to your registered mobile number on the account.
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that → dispute → account
'As security codes were used to complete the disputed transactions, the bank was unable to lodge a chargeback to the merchant,' the letter said.
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letter → use → merchant
Ms Conn has since received a $5,000 goodwill payment from the bank.
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Conn → receive → bank
She said she wasn't happy with how the bank handled the situation.
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bank → say → situation
Teagan Conn, from Echuca, was enjoying a family holiday at a Queensland theme park when she lost the money in the space of just 80 minutes
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she → enjoy → minutes
The 31-year-old received a call from a man claiming to be from the bank's fraud team and was falsely told that suspicious transactions had been made from her account
'
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transactions → receive → account
The bank communication was really poor,' she told news.com.au.
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she → tell → news.com.au
'I have no idea what the investigation process was, what it entailed.
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it → have → what
'It was just, we've looked into it, you gave them the code… and we're not liable for your loss and that was it.'
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that → look → loss
She said the ordeal had left her struggling financially.
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ordeal → say → her
'They took everything, every last cent that we had from the sale of the house,' Ms Conn said.
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Conn → take → house
We still haven't been able to get back to anywhere near that.
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We → get → that
'When we got home from Queensland, we pretty much sold all the assets that we possibly could to get some money back behind us.
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we → get → us
We had to hustle really hard.'
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We → have → ?
A Bendigo Bank spokesman told the Daily Mail that customers needed to protect themselves from scams.
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customers → tell → scams
'It is important customers do not share their passwords or allow someone they don't know to access their devices remotely, as it is extremely difficult to recover money that has been transferred to scammers,' he said.
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he → share → scammers
'The bank attempts to recover funds lost to scams wherever possible and it goes without saying when the bank is at fault, we will reimburse customers for the loss of funds.
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we → attempt → funds
'Goodwill payments are sometimes made at the discretion of the bank.'
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payments → make → bank
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