MasterChef star homeless after hackers steal $250K in scam
Former MasterChef Australia star Dani Venn has been caught up in an online hacking scam that has cost her and her family $250,000.
The cyber-attack has left Dani, her husband Chris and their two young children homeless.
Appearing on MasterChef in 2011 where she came fourth in the reality TV series, Dani and Chris’s life savings were wiped out after an online conveyancing giant was linked to a hacking scam.
Apparently, Dani and her family were warned twice about the security fears in the weeks leading up to the cyber-attack, which resulted in their funds being stolen.
The substantial lump sum that was sitting in their bank account was proceeds from the sale of their old home. But after the $250,000 was stolen, it meant they could not settle on their new property.
“This is our life savings here,” an emotional Dani told A Current Affair.
“We’ve got two small children, a four-and-a-half-month old and a three-and-a-half-year-old,” she continued. “You just can’t do this to people.”
Since the hackers wiped out their account, Dani and the couple’s two kids have had to move in with her mother. Her husband Chris has been forced to live in a caravan.
Meanwhile, because the couple missed the settlement on their new home, they are being charged $500 a day in contractual penalties. They are at risk of losing the property and their deposit if they don’t come up with the $120,000 needed to finalise the purchase.
“It’s scary because it could happen to anyone buying or selling a property,” Dani explained.
PEXA (Property Exchange Australia) is the online platform that Dani and Chris’s conveyancers used to settle the real estate purchase when the proceedings were compromised by hackers.
The conveyancing company was unaware the hackers created a fake username under their PEXA account.
In the meantime, the Commonwealth bank has managed to freeze $138,000 of the stolen funds, however, $110,000 is still missing and not recoverable.
A Current Affair said they repeatedly requested PEXA for an on-camera interview and sent close to 20 questions for them to respond to, but all requests were ignored.
However, PEXA’s Acting CEO James Ruddock said in a statement to ACA that their system is safe, and the loan offer still stands.
“PEXA provides a platform to conduct property settlements. Like the paper process, individual conveyancers are responsible for conducting the settlement process accurately,” Mr Ruddock stated.
“Ms Venn’s funds were misdirected when her conveyancer approved bank account details that were incorrect by using their digital key and password to authorise the settlement of the transaction through the PEXA system.”
Dani’s scam follows two other incidents where one client lost more than $1 million during the settlement process, while another lost close to $700,000.