My name's Aurnab and I'm a disability support worker, before I was a victim of  scam, I thought that, you know, they were just text messages or random emails you'd get. I didn't realise how targeted or specific they could be.

I was selling a mattress via shopping platform. It was for the spare room, and no one ever used it. I got a message on the platform saying, ‘Hey, we've already purchased your item.’

Give us your email address here and we can finish the transaction. I'd given my email address, I receive an email from them.

It looked like it was actually endorsed by website directly. It's got from the team, and they send me a link

to another website, and this website again, looks like the platform for all intents and purposes.

It's got the banner little chat box, and then it finally asked me to put my bank account details in.

I'm like, all right, cool. I'll do this and I'll get paid. The final step is, do you approve this transfer?

Now, I thought it was gonna be a transfer into my account.

Was actually outta my account into what I found later on was a crypto bank account. That was, it was a significant amount of money, basically almost my rent for the month.

It was frustrating, it was depressing. I obviously told all my friends about it and my family about it, because I didn't want the same to happen to them.

I guess these scammers understood that, look, I have a need. I want to sell the mattress, obviously. And they gave me, basically they, they told me that they're gonna pay my list price, no haggling, and all I have to do is just follow some steps and then I'll get paid.

A lot of these scammers are full-time scammers. They will lurk on these platforms waiting for a mark, and they do not care about you. As a result of the scam, I'm a lot more vigilant when it comes to anything that takes me outside of the platform that I'm shopping on.

Always like to eyeball the item first. If you're buying and selling and something's a bit too good to be true, pause for a minute. Stop, check that their details check out. That'll give you the best chance of protecting yourself from these scams in the future.

My name is Shankar. I'm a lawyer.

My understanding of being scammed was such that it could happen to anybody, but I wouldn't find myself being a victim.

I was on the dating apps, swiping away, and I managed to match with Tara.

We developed quite a strong emotional connection in a very relatively short amount of time, and it would come to points where I would suggest maybe meeting up in person for a coffee or a drink.

Tara would be quite keen on doing so, but every single time, there'd be perhaps some sort of circumstances that would arise that would prevent us from meeting up.

We moved on to talking on the phone, and speaking on the phone kind of gave me a bit more of a false sense of reassurance.

The manipulation kind of created an emotional whiplash, sort of, situation, where I was, you know, at one point going, "Maybe I don't need to speak to this person all the time," and then you'd get maybe a scrap of attention almost, and it reel you back in.

Tara brought up the Taylor Swift concert, which I sort of jumped at. Tara managed to procure tickets. However, they came at a great cost to her.

I think it was about $2,500 all up. Hearing about her previous financial situation, being the white knight that I consider myself to be, I jumped at the chance to

reimburse her for her own ticket as well as mine.

As soon as I'd made the transfer of funds to reimburse the tickets, it was almost instantaneous in how there was a complete shutdown in contact.

I was blocked with my number. WhatsApp as well. In hindsight, I can see how there was this elongated period of very little in the way of what I was looking for emotionally until there was a surge of urgency.

It was this disbelief that I could have fallen into some sort of situation like this. There is certainly a sense of loss, and I feel that's where these scammers sort of thrive as they are sort of criminals, engineering that emotive response so that you will act on it.

I want my story out there because I want people to be aware of the sense of all sorts of emotional manipulation that can take place in romance scams, and you owe it to yourself to at least do your due diligence to stop, check, and protect yourself.

My name is Katy and I'm an e-commerce business owner.

I previously thought that it was only older people that would've got scammed or people that don't know much about technology, but it turns out that I got deceived and I didn't expect that to happen.

I'd just gotten back from overseas and I was in between jobs, so I was facing a lot of financial insecurity and I'd heard a lot about crypto and how people are 10x-ing their investment.

And then one day, I was on social media and I came across a celebrity endorsement encouraging this managed fund or a company that would trade crypto on your behalf, and I thought better to leave it to a professional.

I clicked on the link. On face value, it had all the right logos. It seemed very professional, but there was also this sense of urgency that the market is good now and now is the time to get on board.

I invested $1,000 into it and I wanted to make sure for my own peace of mind that I knew how to withdraw the money when the time was right.

So I started looking into that and it just became clearer and clearer that there wasn't any way that I could manage to get it out, and they were insisting that I give over my passport details in order to get the money back.

Then, I started getting some unsolicited emails and phone calls claiming that my earnings had grown substantially, but they could help me get it out.

I would just have to join with them and pay them money. It felt really overwhelming and stressful and frustrating as I was being contacted and sometimes contacted daily multiple times a day.

I just felt like I was being smothered. So I reached out to a very credible Australian crypto platform in order to get their opinion.

They were 99% sure it was a scam, and this gave me a lot of clarity and a bit of closure as well. So it made it easier for me to move forward and cut my losses and stop taking these phone calls.

As a result of this scam, I'm very careful with checking the credibility of anything that I invest in.

I think it's just really important for people to take their time and the moment that you feel this pressure to jump into something, be it a sale or an investment, or handing over personal information, you have every right to put the brakes on.

If they don't respect that you wanna take your time, then it's clearly not a positive path to go down.

I am Julian, and I am a graphic designer for the building and signage industries.

Before I was a victim of a scam, I've always been someone that sort of prided himself on being tech savvy. I never saw that I was a potential victim.

I'd been going through a period of bad mental health. During that time, I had gotten behind in filing taxes. When the call came that said the ATO was going to prosecute you for not filing tax returns, and that there had to be money today to show good faith, that was just plausible enough and I was in a bad enough state that I went along with it.

They knew that there was a lot of shame and embarrassment to be exploited. You know, I would do whatever to fix it. They exploited that very rapidly and had some very definable techniques to prevent me talking to somebody else, to prevent me from calming down.

They said, if you wanna avoid prosecution, that I needed to go and buy these physical gift cards. They made sure that I stayed on speakerphone. They didn't want me to hang up because then I might have seen reason.

After purchasing the gift cards on my credit card, I was sat there in the front seat of my car, reading out, to him over the phone, all of the serial numbers on the gift cards, and that's how they were able to get the money.

He then asked me to get more. I had a moment of clarity and realised that maybe this was a scam and I could check it out by calling the real ATO.

When I was on the phone to the ATO and they said, "No, it's not us," I immediately knew for sure that this was not legitimate. This was a scam.

It took five minutes for me to call the ATO and confirm what the scammer was saying was false. If you're in a heightened emotional state in a financial situation like that, give yourself five minutes to stop, check, and protect yourself.

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