The answer is, sadly, not enough. We are not doing enough to protect ourselves from scammers and Australians remain a number one target for many internationally located fraudsters.
In this article, we share our unique insight into the contributing factors which lead Australians to be a favourite pick for scammers. Cybertrace is on the frontline of combating, disrupting, preventing and investigating scams. Whilst government reporting sites may have statistics about the number of reports received and what types of scams are circulating, we’re often way ahead of those reports. For a long time now, Cybertrace has been the first to learn and warn against new online threats.
The main reasons why Australia is a major target for scammers
We are a wealthy country
Although it may not always feel this way to Australians as currently many of us are challenged by inflation. We’ve all recently felt the increasing costs of groceries, rent, mortgages and just all general living expenses.
Despite everything getting a lot more expensive, Australia is listed as the twelfth most richest country in the world (based on Gross Domestic Product stats) according to the Global Peo Services website.
Okay, so our country is wealthy, but is that really the main reason why we’re being so heavily targeted? Everyone these days knows someone who has been scammed. Our wealth is just one of the contributing factors as to why Australia is so targeted.
We’re trusting
Whilst Cybertrace representatives sadly think this is slowly changing as more and more of us get scammed, overall, Australians are friendly and trusting people. It is, or at least was, just in our nature. We hope that this characteristic is not completely diminished as scams continue to plague our country. Overseas, other countries look to us as the happy, friendly, laid-back, nature-loving, beach going, sun soaking people that we are.
But as Australians become victims of online investment fraud, job scams and asset recovery scams, people are becoming less trusting. Especially of any entity where they cannot physically see the person they are dealing with or actually go to a store location. Our trust has been exploited.
Law enforcement’s response and our global reputation
One of the biggest reasons that Australia remains a number one target for scammers, is the lack of response from law enforcement. Over the years, we’ve seen a lack of assistance, understanding and capability when it comes to law enforcement taking on fraud cases. And we completely acknowledge that your local Police do not have jurisdiction overseas. But we need to do better.
Did you know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will actively pursue an international offender if a US victim is scammed. And they will not only focus on pressing charges against the scammer, they will, and do, recover the funds too! Scammers don’t let getting arrested, and for this reason, many scammers do not mess with US victims.
Below is a screenshot from one of our past investigations. This fraudulent website scammed an Australian victim of our millions of dollars. When our investigators tried to access the website using an IP address from the United States, the below image shows confirming these scammers, do not want the FBI’s attention. But, they don’t seem scared at all to rip off Australians.
In recent years, German police stepped up big time and started raiding boiler rooms and leading arrests. In response to their forceful action, Germany’s reputation spread through the scam community as another country you might just not want to piss off. Intelligence shared directly with us, is that for some scam operations, the criminals couldn’t even manage to find any German speaking scammers for their operations.
If Australian law enforcement doesn’t follow suit and start actively arresting overseas scammers, then these fraudsters will not be concerned about any repercussions.
Australia needs to change the way that it looks at scam cases. It feels right now that essentially if you’re the victim of a scam, it is simply too hard to take on, the chances of getting justice or recovering the money are low and Police don’t have jurisdiction overseas.
Below we share the kind of response you can expect to receive by email once you’ve reported to the Cyber Gov portal as being the victim of a scam. The below are direct excerpts that scam victims have received from Police.
“Crypto-currency owners are not identifiable, but all transactions are publicly available in the blockchain.”
“Unfortunately, [state redacted] Police Force are unable to determine who is in possession of your crypto-currency.”
“As the suspects are based overseas and outside of [state redacted] Police Force jurisdiction and due to the anonymous nature of cryptocurrency, there are no avenues for a successful investigation or the recovery of your funds.”
Out of respect for this state’s Police force, we’ve decided to redact the state mentioned in the above quotes. But this seems to be a standard response from many Police forces.
This response simply does not seem to be enough. We can offer some advice on how to catch scammers. This police force is actually already aware of how crypto tracing can be used to try to identify scammers. By tracing the crypto, yes, there is a chance of identifying who is in possession of the victim’s cryptocurrency.
Furthermore, this automated rejection email states the suspects are based overseas. However, we have seen this response provided to fraud victims when no investigation has yet been conducted. If someone is scammed online, the offender could be located anywhere. Until an investigation is conducted and a suspect in the case identified, there is no evidence to confirm the offender is overseas.
In fact, another state even says the following in their response:
“Any information obtained by an agency employed by you to recover cryptocurrency is unable to be used by the [state redacted]”
Cybertrace was the first company in Australia provide cryptocurrency tracing to the general public. Our crypto trace results have been used by Police across Australia and globally to assist in identifying offenders. Luckily, most Police still accept the results achieved by Cybertrace, despite this statement in their auto email response.
When Cybetrace first started tracing crypto, most Police had no idea what we were talking about and how tracing was used to take on scam cases. We were speaking with Police in all states back then regularly to educate them on how this technique is used to identify scammers. We spent the time to walk them through the process of understanding the results and actioning the results by contacting exchanges where the victim’s funds were cashed out.
And now, the response from the Police is: we are not going to investigate, we are not going to trace your crypto and we’re also not going to accept results from a private company that traces your crypto for you. No wonder scam victims are left feeling helpless and with little support from the Australian Government and law enforcement.
We understand that if the scammer is overseas, then state Police can’t do much. But there needs to be a process in place where the case is referred to Australian Federal Police (AFP) to then act internationally or refer the case to law enforcement overseas.
Our investigation reports and evidence have been referred to INTERPOL in past cases to continue efforts internationally.
Finally, some positive changes
We’ve discussed the lack of help, support, and response already. But as the issue of Australians being scammed becomes bigger and more media attention is put on the topic, slowly, changes are occurring. Let’s look at a couple of the positive changes we’ve seen.
The National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) was launched in July 2023. An entity dedicated to collecting scam intelligence and disrupting scam operations.
The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has been taking down scam websites since July 2023.
In a media release published by AFP on 28th of August 2024, they announce Operation Firestorm. Now this is something that actually gets us a little bit excited! Operation Firestorm is not just a cool operation names, it is an initiative targeting scam networks and is a commitment to protecting Australians from financial loss and harm. Hopefully we see some changes to our reputation with scammers if the AFP are getting serious about launching new efforts.
So, we’re certainly seeing some positive changes here in Australia. But we are still keen to see a lot more done, including as we’ve said for many years, more collaboration between the private and public sector.
We welcome your feedback, comments or ideas on what changes need to be made in Australia to protect us from scams. You can share your comments below, or email us at [email protected].
