Former IT expert Tony Papagiannopoulos never thought he’d be “that guy”.
The scammers had other ideas.
Tony Papagiannopoulos has always been careful with money.
It was drummed into him after moving to Australia from Greece with his mother and little more than a suitcase when he was just 15.
Mr Papagiannopoulos, now 52, spoke no English when he arrived. He studied hard, eventually mastering his second language and working his way through an IT degree.
He saved scrupulously through his 25-year career in the private and public sectors, self-managing most of the money for retirement.
In March this year, he started looking to move $200,000 — a large chunk of his retirement savings — from an investment that wasn’t doing very well.
“I spoke to a couple of accountants, a couple of different people,” he said.
“They said, ‘You’re going to have to either go to shares if you want to take a bigger risk or you have to go to bonds, which is somewhere in the middle.’
So he turned to the first place most other Australians would: Google.
Mr Papagiannopoulos searched for “Australian bonds investment” comparison sites and clicked on the first few that came up.
“They looked secure — the website came up professionally,” he said.
The…
