Canberra widower traumatised after $5,000 was stolen from his ANZ account in sneaky Kuwait scam and bank bosses allegedly refused to act

A grieving 61-year-old man said a shocking scam has left him in limbo for six weeks while mourning the death of his wife, and fearing he’ll be robbed again.

The Canberra man said he was waiting outside his solicitors office to finalise the last of his late wife’s estate last May when he received messages from his two banks.

The texts warned there was ‘suspicious’ activity on his Great Southern Bank and ANZ accounts.

When he checked he found an unknown thief had spent $10,000 of his hard-earned money in Kuwait in the Middle East.

A Canberra man, 61, had more than $5,000 stolen from his ANZ account last May (pictured, the fraudulent transfers)

‘I was going through a fair bit of stress anyway with my wife passing away, I was at my lowest,’ he told news.com.au. 

Great Southern Bank was able to quickly put a stop to the transactions.

However, ANZ allegedly refused to cancel the two $2,676.19 transactions that were taken from the account – despite both still ‘pending’ when the man discovered them.

He claims ANZ staff said they would only be able to begin investigating the case once the transfers were cleared from the account.

When asked why the bank couldn’t stop the stolen money from leaving the account, its reason was it ‘couldn’t disadvantage the merchant’, he said. 

‘They stayed pending for five days. All I could do was wait until the funds left my account. I went back and forth with ANZ for the whole five days,’ the man said.

He described the bank’s eventual investigation as ‘six weeks of hell’ and lodged a complaint, which was later withdrawn, with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

In the end, the Canberran’s funds were fully recovered but he was never told how the thieves managed to get ahold of his bank details.

The man claims ANZ (above) refused to cancel the fraudulent payments while they spent five days ‘pending’ because it didn’t want to ‘disadvantage the merchant’

He claims he now lives his day-to-day life constantly wondering when he will fall victim to another scam.

‘I check my bank accounts every couple of hours. Every phone call I get is suspicious,’ he said.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted ANZ for comment.