The AFP has urged the public to be increasingly vigilant, noting the growing prevalence and complexity of these scams. Data from the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) indicates that during the 2023-24 financial year, Australians lost a total of AUD 382 million (USD 259 million) to investment scams. Nearly half of these losses, about 47%, involved cryptocurrencies.
The AFP highlighted that individuals under the age of 50 are now more frequently targeted by these scams. Reports show that 60% of the scam incidents reported to police involved victims from this age group. In related news, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced earlier this month that it had shut down 615 cryptocurrency investment scams during the first year of a programme designed to combat fraudulent investment websites. In the previous year, Australians lost a total of AUD 1.3 billion (USD 870 million) to investment scams.
AFP Assistant Commissioner Richard Chin emphasised that the assumption that only older individuals fall victim to scams is inaccurate. He noted that scammers often employ high-pressure tactics and various methods to deceive individuals into making poor investment decisions. One prevalent technique is ‘pig butchering,’ which is a long-term scam and investment fraud in which the victim is gradually lured into making increasing contributions. Deepfake technology is also widely employed by scammers.
According to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, the National Anti-Scam Centre’s collaborative efforts across government, law enforcement, consumer organisations and industry have supported the community’s fight against financial crime, which resulted in a 13.1 % decline in reported losses to USD 2.74 billion in 2023.
Data reveals that Australians made over 601,000 scam reports to organisations such as Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX), IDCARE and ASIC in 2023, representing an 18.5% increase on 2022. In terms of financial losses, investment scams continued to cause the most harm, followed by remote access scams and romance scams.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now