Investment Frauds Cheated Australians $328 Million in 2020

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued a report recently that government agencies have dealt with 444,164 different scams in total in 2020, with more than $850 million involved.

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According to the report, of the total amount of the money defrauded, nearly $328 million were lost to investment scams, $131 million were lost to romance scams, and around $128 million to business email frauds. Compared with 2019, the number of the frauds reported to Scamwatch increased about 23%. 

“It is not surprising that in 2020, 25% of all scam reports involved the loss of personal information, up from 16% in 2019. Loss of personal information was even higher among Indigenous consumers, where 36% of all scam reports involved the loss of personal information. The increasing value of personal information at a time when face-to-face transactions were not possible was a significant driver of scam activity in 2020,”ACCC detailed.

Investment scam was the category with the highest losses with the number reported to scamwatch surging by 63%. The average loss to investment scams reached AUD 26,713.

“It appears to be increasingly difficult for people to identify legitimate investment opportunities from scams. Scammers no longer just rely on professional-looking websites. They now have the ability to contact people through phone, apps, social media and other means. We saw more fraudulent celebrity endorsements of investment opportunities advertised across digital platforms as well as scammers posing as romance interests to 'bait' people into scam investments,”the Australian authority mentioned in the report.