investigation
Top 10 worst scams: How Australians were robbed of nearly $569 million by fraudsters in 2022

Beneath the realm of promise offered by the worldwide web hides an army of sophisticated criminal syndicates singly focused on tricking Australians out of their hard-earned money. Where once a balaclava and a replica pistol were the go-to tools to gain a quick cash fix, bank tellers are targets of the past as a modern form of daylight robbery evolves. Subtle scams have replaced violent holdups, with perpetrators tugging at the heartstrings of victims, or banking on their naivety to snatch their savings. While financial scams are far from new, their latest iteration, thought to have begun in West African countries such as Nigeria, has become a global phenomenon, particularly strong across Asia. They can hit anywhere, anytime, across many platforms. Australians were robbed of nearly $569 million by fraudsters in 2022, mostly through investment scams over the phone or through social networking. Victims over the age of 65 were hardest hit, to the tune of $121 million. West Australians reported scam losses of a whopping $16 million last year, but the total in reality was likely much higher. It was up from $14.6m in 2021 and double the $8.1m lost in 2017. Commerce Minister Sue Ellery warned on Tuesday the rackets were becoming increasingly sophisticated, often creating a “sense of urgency” that caused their victims to temporarily lose the ability to think critically. A taxi service’s phone and online booking systems were this week shut down after hackers locked the company out of its systems and demanded a ransom in exchange for access. Suspicious activity was detected by Black and White Cabs staff on Wednesday morning. That afternoon it was discovered the company had been targeted by a crypto locker ransomware attack. Perhaps more worryingly, Aboriginal health and community leader Donna Nelson is currently locked up in Tokyo facing drug-trafficking charges. Her family insists the charges came after she was duped into carrying illicit substances by a Nigerian man she met online. On Friday, this author had a Twitter message from a user named “Etooheterorob”, with a cartoon mouse as a profile and no followers despite joining the platform in September. The user asked for help to manage a bank account. It came complete with account number and password. On the same day I got a text message saying my Netflix account subscription was “unchanged”, but that I needed to click on a link to check. There was even a home landline call from a woman with an Indian accent claiming she was “Selma from Telstra’s technical department” and she needed my internet details. And an email from the Agnes Elizabeth Gift Foundation said my email address had been “randomly selected after an electronic computer spin-ball draw” and I would get $1.7 million just by sending a confirmation reply. It’s these scam attempts, along with far more advanced versions, that have experts worried for those have been exposed. “For anyone who has lost any money or other ID information, it’s terrible,” Consumer Protection fraud liaison officer Felicia Prindiville said. “But it’s the emotional side of it as well. Once they’ve lost $100,000 or $200,000, it’s gone and it’s life-changing for a lot of people. It leaves them emotionally bankrupt.” Ms Prindiville, who works in the State Government-run ScamNet team, which has a close link with Crime Stoppers, said ScamNet had gone from receiving “a few reports” when it started in 2013 to up to 30 reports a day. Recent hacks on high-profile companies such as Optus, Medibank Private and British retailer JD Sports Fashion, likely meant criminals had easier access to the personal details of unwitting victims. “The amount of reports we get is kind of crazy and we’re always following our tail,” she said. “They come through at any time of day, over the weekend, and it’s just non-stop. They are thinking of any kind of way to get your money and your ID and it’s working because people are handing over both of those things left, right and centre. “It used to be money going to lots of West African countries, but it’s now spread across the world. We’ve been told a lot of money is now going to the United Kingdom, all across Asia, America and also just within Australia: so it’s right here, too. “Our main messaging at the moment is just maintaining this healthy scepticism. You can’t trust anything that comes through to you, whether it’s an SMS, an email or a phone call.” WA ScamNet had recently seen a rise in online shopping scams related to the global COVID pandemic, with motorhome, caravan and sea-container sale scams targeting people wanting to travel, robbing them of hundreds of thousands of dollars. There had also been a re-emergence of rental scams because of the housing shortage, where people are so desperate for a home, they respond to advertisements on platforms such as Facebook or Gumtree asking for up-front payment. The ads are fake and the money is lost. Ms Prindiville said “sextortion” was another current source of angst as scammers targeted people between the ages of 18 and 24, particularly through social media. She said initially innocent approaches such as “friend requests” often escalated quickly into perceived relationships. It regularly led to the swapping of lewd images and videos that were then used for blackmail. Ms Prindiville said scammers were becoming increasingly agile and difficult to pin down. “They are so well-orchestrated now,” she said. “They can make emails look very legitimate and they send SMS messages that look like they’ve come from your bank. Then people will send all their information because they think they’re dealing with the right thing. “It’s this ability to hide behind legitimate businesses and agencies that is probably the most scary thing and seems to be such an easy thing for scammers to do. For us to even determine that it is a fake is sometimes really hard because they’re so believable when you’re looking at them. “They’re just getting smarter and we’re always that one step behind when a scammer morphs. We get our warnings out and then they change what they’re doing again.” In a new bid to combat scammers and fraud activity, the Commonwealth Bank is implementing detection checks across its digital banking platforms. The industry-first technology is designed to flag if a BSB or account number looks suspicious and is a part of the bank’s wider initiative to shore-up the data and financial information protection of its customer base. Closer to home, Perth man Chris Litchfield admitted on Tuesday he had lost nearly $100,000 after being tricked by a caller claiming to be from NBN Co. He granted them access to his computer. The scammers methodically transferred money out of his bank account in amounts just below the $10,000 threshold that commonly draws the attention of financial institutions. They even had two men wearing NBN Co outfits park a van with what appeared to be telecommunications equipment in it outside his house as part of a ploy to convince him the company was working on upgrades at a nearby junction box. Just before Christmas, Albany teen Aurora Casilli lost her life savings after transferring more than $36,500 to someone pretending to be from the bank. She was later told by NAB that there was nothing it could do to replace her money as she had authorised the payment. There has also been a local example of the emerging “puppy scam”, where a Perth woman lost $3800 just before Christmas after searching for a dog. She found an online “breeder” selling Shih Tzu-Maltese puppies from Tasmania. The scammer sent her paperwork with his credentials, convincing her to send $1800 before then demanding a further $2000 for a transportation crate with a threat of reporting her for “doggy abandonment” if she didn’t pay. Another Perth woman lost $29,800 trying to buy a motorhome. She said she was dealing with a legitimate company before communications became compromised in a payment redirection scam and money was sent to a scammer’s bank account. A third Perth woman lost $123,000 in an investment scam involving Bitcoin. In 2022, Consumer Protection’s Contact Centre received 2000 calls relating to scams. Phishing scams, where cybercriminals attempt to steal confidential information, accounted for 28 per cent of the total number. People aged 35 to 44 reported the greatest losses of $2,660,826. Females accounted for the higher proportion of reports made. Julia Powles, an associate professor of law and technology at the University of WA, urged people to make a phone call if someone they knew sent them a link. She said the ACCC website was a valuable source of advice for avoiding scams. Her team had recently been studying social media giant Facebook to see how scammers were using it to dupe victims into giving them money. “My research team has a particular focus on Facebook’s outsized role in enabling scams and other criminal activity on its platforms,” Professor Powles said. “Facebook has so far evaded liability for systemic misconduct through elaborate corporate structuring and offshoring of key activities like ad review. This year, two important Australian cases are taking on Facebook over cryptoscams. One is led by the national consumer watchdog, the ACCC, and the other is a novel criminal action here in WA, led by Dr Andrew Forrest.” Ms Prindiville urged scam or hack victims to immediately go into “protection mode” by contacting the free IDCARE service, undertaking regular credit checks, changing all online passwords and applying two-factor identification. She encouraged people to always go to the official website of a supposedly reputable company that had contacted them and then call them back on the correct number. But there was also something that could be done to avoid becoming a victim. “The main thing we always say is just practicing the pause. I can’t stress that enough,” she said. “It’s just taking even that couple of seconds to really think, ‘OK, why have I got a message from Amazon Prime telling me I have to click on this link when I don’t even have an Amazon Prime account?’. It’s just thinking before you do anything because once you do something, it’s very hard to recover anything. “People are starting to look for the red flags and we want them to tell others if they see anything that doesn’t look right.”

investigationTop 10 worst scams: How Australians were robbed of nearly $569 million by fraudsters in 2022

investigation
Top 10 worst scams: How Australians were robbed of nearly $569 million by fraudsters in 2022