Australian law enforcement agencies are working together with their international counterparts to alert consumers to the dangers of advance fee fraud as part of the Global Day of Action—Think Fraud!
Think Fraud! takes place on 1 June 2010 and is part of a world-wide effort by the International Mass Marketing Fraud Working Group to combat advance fee fraud.
Advance fee fraud includes scams involving money transfer requests, and lottery and competition scams. The scam involves consumers being tricked into providing smaller amounts of money upfront in order to obtain larger amounts later in the form of prizes or a long lost inheritance. However, in order to claim these ‘winnings’ or ‘prizes’, the recipient must send payment for expenses such as government taxes and/or legal fees. The recipient will never be sent the money or prize that was promised.
Millions of consumers and businesses around the world are being fleeced of tens of billions of dollars by mass marketing fraud, which uses mass-communications media—including the internet, mass mailings and telephones—to contact, solicit, and obtain money, property, or other items of value from multiple victims in one or more jurisdictions. These operations are increasingly transnational, interconnected and highly adaptive and make detection, disruption and prosecution difficult for domestic law enforcement agencies.
The Working Group's Threat Assessment Report (attached below) will assist agencies around the world to develop enhanced counter measures to detect, deter and disrupt mass marketed fraudulent activity.
The Working Group consists of a number of domestic and international law enforcement agencies, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, state and territory law enforcement agencies, the US Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the UK Office of Fair Trading, Europol, and the Nigerian Economic Financial Crime Commission.
Think Fraud! activities aim to increase consumer awareness on a global level about the dangers of scams involving advance fee fraud, and educate consumers about how to recognise these scams and the steps that they can take to protect themselves from fraud.
