A former MasterChef finalist who was caught in a conveyancing hacker attack has recovered half of the $250,000 that had been stolen from her while using Property Exchange Australia (PEXA), Australia’s new online property transfer system, but she and her family could still be left without a home.
Dani Venn and husband Chris Burgess were left homeless last week after hackers diverted the funds from her recently sold Melbourne property to the third-party accounts they had set up to breach the software system PEXA.
Venn's bank, the Commonwealth Bank, was able to freeze $138,000 of the funds, but the remaining $110,000 is now “missing” and “not recoverable” after it was whisked off by the hackers who entered the system via her conveyancer's account, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The couple and their two young children have been left homeless by the incident, as they are now unable to pay for their dream property in Morning Peninsula and may lose their deposit.
Venn said she was unsure when, or if, the stolen funds would be recovered. The theft would be the subject of an insurance claim by her conveyancer Sargeants Knox Conveyancing, whose emails were hacked.
“It could be months, it could be longer. We don’t know,” Venn told SMH.
The family currently stays in a single room in a relative's home while they sort out the issue, with Venn starting a GoFundMe page to raise enough funds to avoid losing their home deposit.
Meanwhile, PEXA is working to close the security flaw, and the company said that the incident won't impinge on impinge on plans for a $1bn public listing on the Australian stock exchange, the report said.
