Victorian pensioner Ian Williams took National Australia Bank to court for about $379 million after scammers took $1,338 from his account. He said the fight was about being believed and getting an apology, not making money.
Mr Williams, from Bendigo, found two transactions he says he did not make. They totalled $1,338 and happened at a Coles in Bundoora in 2022.
He says bank staff told him the payments were linked to his Google Pay that left him determined to show he was not responsible.
He collected material he believed supported his story. This included police information about CCTV at the supermarket and data from his phone showing he was not in Melbourne when the transactions happened.
The bank offered to return the money if he signed a non disclosure agreement and accepted there was no admission of fault. He refused and prepared a Supreme Court of Victoria claim himself.
The amount came from his attempt to make the dispute proportionate. Mr Williams worked out the stolen money was 5.5% of his annual income. He then asked for 5.5% of NAB’s profit, filing a claim for $379,005,000.
Court filings then took an unusual turn when the bank missed a response deadline and Mr Williams got a default judgment. NAB later challenged it. Mr Williams also took his case to Canberra.
He pushed for law changes to cover smaller scams and confronted NAB chief executive Andrew Irvine at a parliamentary hearing to seek an apology.
In the Australian Story account of the case, NAB executives later met Mr Williams. They gave him an apology letter, confirmed the $1,338 had been returned and said the bank would not seek legal costs against him.
Mr Williams said what mattered was that the bank accepted he was a victim of a sophisticated scam. He argued to expect the customer to take responsibility for their system being broken is just ludicrous.
The dispute has played out as Australia tightens its response to scams. Losses reached a record $3.1 billion in 2022 before dropping to $2.03 billion in 2024, according to official reporting.
ASIC has also reported that customers carried 96% of scam losses across the major banks reviewed. Federal parliament passed the Scams Prevention Framework in February 2025.
It set mandatory obligations for designated sectors including banks while the UK brought in mandatory reimbursement protections for certain scams from 7 October 2024.
