Commonwealth Bank have spoken out after Melbourne couple claimed they lost $90,000

Commonwealth Bank has responded to claims from a young Melbourne couple who said their life savings had vanished during a botched cash transfer.

A new CBA statement claimed that the receipt numbers provided by the couple don’t match the bank’s records.

Ellie Houston, 21, and her partner Trae Murphy, 23, alleged that $90,000 had gone missing from their CBA account when they went to settle a deposit for land in Yarrawonga, a small country town near the NSW and Victoria border.

In an interview with 3AW yesterday, Ms Houston claimed that she has screenshots and receipts tracking the money between the accounts, and that they could see the money sitting in their account while they were in Bali.

However, a CBA spokesperson has now said in a statement that following an investigation, Mr Murphy has been informed that receipt numbers provided “do not exist in CBA records”.

“On examination of the images of the receipts provided, the documents appear to​ differ from genuine CBA receipts and the receipt numbers do not exist in CBA records,” the statement read.

The bank said their own records did not match the information provided by the couple, including “changes to balances and a receipt for a transaction which cannot be made from a savings account”.

The statement continued, adding that the account hasn’t had a balance that high in the last 12 months.

“The account in question (or any other account held by Mr Murphy) did not have a balance of $96,000 (or an amount close to it) at the time of the relevant transfers or the 12 months prior.”

According to the statement, Mr Murphy has also been informed that the account in question is a NetBank Saver, “which only permits transfers to another CBA account and is unable to process transfers to another financial institution”.

CBA’s statement added that Mr Murphy had made a complaint and asked CBA to investigate his account balance after two failed transfers to the Bank of Melbourne, as he contended that the balance should be $96,000.

The spokesperson added: “Subject to receiving additional information from Mr Murphy, CBA is willing to make further enquiries.”

The couple has not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

Speaking to 3AW yesterday, Ms Houston said that she and her partner were left with just $0.75 in their CBA bank account after two failed transfers.

She said that they ran into trouble on June 30 when they tried transferring the lump sum of $90,000 to a Bank of Melbourne account.

“Our money bounced back into our CBA account because both our names weren’t approved yet on the Bank of Melbourne account,” Ms Houston told 3AW on Monday.

She claimed that they tried sending the money again on July 4, before jetting to Bali the next day.

Three days later, on July 7, the money bounced back into their Commonwealth Bank account once more.

Being in Bali, she said they weren’t able to settle the land while overseas, with the sum of money being so large.

As a result, they waited until they returned to Australia on July 20.

From there, they went straight to the Commonwealth Bank, where they found only $0.75 in their account.

“No money in our account, $0.75. They can’t tell us where it’s gone, nothing,” Ms Houston said.

“My partner and I have been together since we were 15 years old, we’ve saved for so long for this land, and our goal was always to pay the land off before we put a house on it, so we could then travel.

“And now everything, everything got taken from under us.”

As emotions ran high, the couple sat in the Commonwealth Bank office for five hours.

“We were obviously visibly distressed because we’d lost so much money, and they asked us if we were being held ransom because we were so upset,” she said.

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According to Ms. Houston, the bank then took five weeks to come back with an answer from a complaints team.

“To say three dot points of ‘our records don’t match your records, you haven’t had money in that account for a year’, that was it.”

The couple also claim they were referred to a suicide helpline after contacting Commonwealth Bank for help.

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