“One of the most common types of scams these days in Australia are the investment scams. Aussie investors lost US$ 670 Million to crypto fraudsters and scammers while US$ 75 Million has been stolen from the banking transfers.” These are the finding which has been contained in a report authored by Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.
Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) has compiled a report which has been made public yesterday. In this report, ACCC has revealed that in the past year a large number of Australian investors were subjected to frauds, scams, and thefts. However, the authority noticed that majority of funds were lost to crypto fraudsters and scammers. Meanwhile, ACCC noticed that an amount of US$ 75 Million too has been stolen though they were sent through proper banking transfers.
The authority gave statistics to show that in 2020 there were about a million complaints of scams. However, only 444,000 complaints were duly recorded and lodged with the concerned authorities. The report talked in brief about the growing instances of frauds and cybercrimes in the country. It was told by ACCC that Aussie investors lost a collective amount of US$ 851 Million to fraud and scam artists.
Dy. Chair of ACCC, Delia Rickard said that the losses caused in 2020 were the highest ever recorded in Australia’s history. The authority is expecting that the losses for the present and future years would much higher than 2020. It was noticed by ACCC that there were a total of 444,000 registered complaints however a large number of incidents are not reported. The reason is that the victims feel embarrassed and therefore do not go to local police and cybercrimes authority.
It was reported that US$ 670 Million was looted from Australian investors by actors of crypto fraud. However, with regard to banking transfers, even there has been a loss too. The authority noticed that customers of banks lost approximately US$ 75 Million to fraudsters. But in comparison with crypto, the figure of loss through banking channels is almost none. ACCC told further that in the last year the collective financial losses (including crypto and banks) were only US$ 254.
These are surprising facts that cannot be ignored, opined ACCC.
The authority was of the view that the rate of cybercrimes has doubled since last year. Most of the money was lost to the fake schemes of crypto investment. Also, there was a record increase in the number of ransomware attacks in which corporate entities were asked to pay ransom in millions of dollars.
However, as compared to crypto frauds, the frauds involving banks were small. Yet from the past year, banking frauds too have almost doubled in Australia. The authority is concerned that immediate action to be taken for which regulators, government, and law enforcement agencies will need to sit together.
