{"id":63053,"date":"2025-07-13T20:05:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/63053\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T20:05:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:05:31","slug":"meet-the-pensioner-taking-nab-to-supreme-court-over-1338-in-fraudulent-transactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/63053\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the pensioner taking NAB to Supreme Court over $1,338 in fraudulent transactions"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a cool, grey spring morning in 2022 when Ian Williams woke up and discovered two transactions on his account he did not make.<\/p>\n

“I was sitting on the toilet and checking through my bank account, as you do,” he said.<\/p>\n

One was for $515, the other was $823. They had been made a few days earlier at a Coles supermarket in Bundoora, about 150 kilometres from his regional Victorian home in Bendigo.<\/p>\n

He called the bank and was told to wait while staff investigated.<\/p>\n

Check out the new series<\/a><\/p>\n

Background Briefing investigates when small feuds take on a life of their own. Listen for free on ABC Listen\u00a0on your mobile device.<\/p>\n

Two hours later, he said, a customer service representative from uBank, a subsidiary of National Australia Bank (NAB), called him back and said, according to the bank’s payment data, the transactions had been made using Williams’s Google Pay account.<\/p>\n

“They said that I was guilty, I was responsible. I was personally at Coles to do the transactions with my phone and my thumbprint.”<\/p>\n

That was an accusation he would never let go.<\/p>\n

Two and half years later, Williams was outside the Supreme Court in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

He’d just learnt he could be in line to win more than $300 million in his case against the bank over the fraud.<\/p>\n

After months of scrolling through codes, acts, and case law to represent himself in the most David and Goliath of cases, the bank hadn’t shown up at court, and a judge had found in his favour.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ian Williams takes the train to Melbourne from Bendigo to take up his fight with the bank. (ABC News: Rachel Clayton)<\/p>\n

All that had to be decided was how much money he’d get for his trouble.<\/p>\n

Then, just as the scales were starting to tip his way, the bank’s legal team came storming in.<\/p>\n

‘I just won’t wear being called a liar’<\/p>\n

When NAB told Williams he was responsible for the missing $1,338 on that cool spring morning back in 2022, he wasted little time trying to prove them wrong.<\/p>\n

His maps app showed he never left Bendigo, his sleep app indicated he was asleep close to the time the transactions went through. He had call and text logs to prove a friend of his was headed over for a cuppa that morning.<\/p>\n

When that wasn’t enough, he visited his local police station, filled out a fraud pack, made a statement, and had an officer sign off that he had witnessed the map data was from Williams’s phone.<\/p>\n

He sent his police statement to the bank, believing it would finally clear up any misunderstanding.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ian Williams knows what he is risking by taking on one of Australia’s biggest banks.\u00a0 (ABC News: Rachel Clayton)<\/p>\n

When that didn’t work, he went to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).<\/p>\n

By now, the police had viewed and collected the CCTV from the supermarket.<\/p>\n

Williams wasn’t provided a copy of the tape, but he was given a description in an email from police.<\/p>\n

“It looks like two young males who look nothing like you have somehow been able to create copies of your (and likely others) credit card details on phone handsets to buy gift cards,” the email read.<\/p>\n

The evidence showed Williams wasn’t the one using his phone to make those transactions at a supermarket 150km away from his home.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

National Australia Bank operates U-Bank, the digital-only bank Ian Williams joined the same year his card was compromised. (ABC News: Rachel Clayton)<\/p>\n

Then, came the answer most scam victims desperately hope for.<\/p>\n

The bank would return the $1,338, in full.<\/p>\n

But, there was a catch.<\/p>\n

He would need to sign a non-disclosure agreement and, crucially, agree that the payment did not mean the bank was taking responsibility for the missing funds.<\/p>\n

Williams was ropeable.<\/p>\n

“I could use a lot more expletives, I can tell you. It’s offensive, absolutely offensive \u2026 nowhere near good enough,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Williams said.<\/p>\n

“Now they can pay me some compensation. I want a letter of apology and a letter of acknowledgement that they’re at fault, not me.”<\/p>\n

He told the bank the reason for his refusal. Five months later, they made him another offer: how about $1,500 as a “full and final settlement”?<\/p>\n

Williams would have to agree not to take legal action. The offer would expire in two weeks.<\/p>\n

Again, he said no.<\/p>\n

“It’s the principle of the thing. I just won’t wear being called a liar.<\/p>\n

“I had to fight for myself all my life and this sort of injustice, where common people are being trampled \u2026 it’s just getting worse and worse.<\/p>\n

“I’m a stubborn old turd, and I will not give up.”<\/p>\n

The legal case that nobody would take on<\/p>\n

At 73 years old, Williams was no stranger to new and unfamiliar environments.<\/p>\n

He ran away from home at 15, he said, hitchhiking his way around the country, sleeping in the hollows of trees, under bridges, and squatting in abandoned terraced houses.<\/p>\n

“A 12-by-eight piece of black plastic is the best thing I’ve ever had,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ian WIlliams on his motorcycle, near his home in Bendigo. (ABC News: Rachel Clayton)<\/p>\n

The decades of his life were filled with a diverse range of jobs: stunt man, actor, prawn trawler fisherman. He ran his own business in security investigating stock shrinkage, bought a television tower in rural Victoria for $1, which he still owns. He learnt how to fly planes, play the acoustic guitar, and two years ago walked for 18 days straight as part of the Long Walk from Melbourne to Canberra.<\/p>\n

One of his biggest motivations to take on a corporate giant was to donate any money he won to Indigenous health charities.<\/p>\n

And so, for the past year, filled with the drive of a man who flourishes in the face of something new, Williams began most nights, about 8pm, scrolling through dozens of legal databases and dry legislation.<\/p>\n

He read the stories of those who’ve lost hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to fraud and scams, and wrote and rewrote an argument to take to court, often huddled into his corner desk until the sun came up.<\/p>\n

“I might not go to bed until eight or nine o’clock the next morning,” he said.<\/p>\n

He visited legal aid, the law institute, and universities, had meetings with civil lawyers who said they might be able to take on his case pro bono, but who, in the end, gave him advice about where to secure a personal loan to pay their fees.<\/p>\n

“Nobody would take it on. Maybe because it’s a bank and they’re too big to fight?” he said.<\/p>\n

So, about 18 months after the bank’s final offer, on a mild summer day in December 2024, Williams caught the train down to Melbourne with his friend Richard Sugden, to the headquarters of NAB.<\/p>\n

There, armed with a stack of papers, he sat down with a woman from the bank called Sarah and took her through his 14-page writ that outlined he was seeking $379 million in exemplary damages.<\/p>\n

\"Papers<\/p>\n

Ian Williams has spent an enormous amount of time studying Australian banks’ obligations, as he represents himself in court. (ABC News: Rachel Clayton)<\/p>\n

Williams had calculated that $1,338 was about 5.5 per cent of his annual pension.<\/p>\n

And $379.05 million was 5.5 per cent of NAB’s 2022 profit after tax.<\/p>\n

“Things need to be proportionate,” he said.<\/p>\n

In those documents, Williams claimed the bank:<\/p>\n