A WOMAN lost almost $40,000 after responding to a simple email and now her bank says there’s nothing it can do.
Molly from St Andrew went to her bank last December to transfer $39,818.93 to an overseas bank account for a shipment of more than 9,000 meters of fabric.
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This was her third order of ultra-soft organic cotton, which she purchased from a factory in India.
However, she never received the order because the money reached its destination, but not in the right account.
Molly and her husband, Aurelien, own Bon Dimanche – which means Good Sunday in French.
The workshop also houses the couple’s hand-screen printed clothing store, Petit Pilou, and their graphic design company, Moho Design Creative.
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The huge shipment of fabric, which weighed more than 6,000 pounds, was to be used for screen printing and sewing three years’ supply of children’s clothing.
It took the couple nearly a year to develop the proposal, Molly said. The Berkshire Eagle.
The search involved finding the right cotton farm and getting the right yarn to knit to Moho’s specifications.
This includes the correct weight, color and wash of the fabric.
Ordering the fabric involved a lot of back and forth with a representative from a company that ensures the correct factory makes the fabric.
The couple felt they weren’t getting consistent quality from American sources and things only got worse with the pandemic.
This made them change their purchasing habits, which led them to find the perfect line at a factory in the Gautam Buddha Nagar district of northern India.
They have already placed two orders with the factory and worked with their representative, Saji, with whom they established a relationship in 2020.
Between orders, the couple does their best to save money money so they can buy the next three years of fabric.
Molly entered Lee Bank to send the money into an account with WIO, a digital banking platform based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The WIO website says that to open a personal account, a person needs a valid Emirati ID and a valid UAE phone number.
Lee Bank uses PNC Bank for international banking transactions.
Molly said she received the transfer instructions via email from her representative, Saji, and was informed that the transfer reached its destination successfully.
“And then about two or three weeks later when it was time to actually release the goods,” Molly said.
“[Saji] said, ‘Weirdly, we’re not seeing the payment in our bank account,’ and I said, ‘That’s bizarre, everything has been approved.'”
Saji told Molly to submit a form to track the money, which she did, but he never received the money.
“And I sent him a copy of the email that was sent, and when he got the email, he said, ‘That’s not my email address,’ and I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ,” said Molly.
She looked and saw that the email addresses were almost identical.
The December wire transfer was sent to a WIO bank account that, according to Molly’s instructions, belonged to Saji’s company but in fact did not.
Molly believes the account was opened with false documents.
It took about two months for everyone to realize that Saji’s computer had been hacked and someone was impersonating him in emails between him and Molly.
This included stealing photos of the fabric and packaging shipments from his computer.
“There’s no getting it back,” Molly said. “I tried everything.”
She reported the scam last month to the FBI but has yet to receive a response.
Molly also went to Lee Bank, but since the transfer instructions were to a real bank account and she authorized the transaction, there was nothing they could do.
She also looked at her business insurance policy, which covers cybercrime, but “there is a clause that basically says that the money would have to have been stolen from us by someone going into our bank account without our knowledge and withdrawing it.”
“Does not cover any type of fraud that includes a voluntary person transfer of the money,” Molly said.
Molly said she never thought she would fall for such a scam.
“I’m a very organized person,” she said.
“I’m very careful. I had no idea that was a possibility, you know, this type of crime is out there.”
US Sun has reached out to Lee Bank and WIO for comment.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
