People are increasingly being caught out by celebrity endorsement scams, with reports to Scamwatch increasing 400 per cent and losses increasing a staggering 3,800 per cent so far in 2018.
Scammers are increasingly catching out people by impersonating well-known businesses or the police so they can get access to computers and steal money or banking information.
Scamwatch is warning the Australian community to be wary about investment scams, with statistics revealing Australians are collectively losing $4.3 million a month to these scams.
Scamwatch is warning the Chinese community in Australia to be wary about two frightening scams targeting them that involve threats of arrest, and extortion via fake kidnappings.
Scams Awareness Week runs from 21–25 May 2018. Australians are urged to be on the lookout for threat-based impersonation scams by taking a moment to ‘Stop and check: is this for real?’.
Scammers swindled nearly $4.7 million from Australian businesses in 2017 according to the ACCC’s latest Targeting scams report – a 23 per cent increase compared to 2016.
We're warning the Chinese community in Australia to be wary of scammers posing as Chinese authorities and/or employees of DHL and threatening them with deportation or arrest unless they pay large sums of money.