The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued a warning though its Scamwatch website for people to be wary of investment scams, with statistics revealing $4.3 million is being lost to the scams every month.
Deputy Chair of ACCC, Delia Rickard said that so far in 2018, more than $26 million had been reported lost to investment scams — already 84 per cent of the total losses recorded in 2017.
“This represents an average month-on-month increase in losses of 117 per cent compared to last year,” Ms Rickard said.
“The losses to investment scams are horrific.
“Each week the ACCC receives heartbreaking accounts of people losing hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of dollars.”
She said that last year, people in Australia reported to Scamwatch and the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) that they had lost $64.6 million to investment scams.
“If the current trend continues, combined losses reported to Scamwatch and ACORN in 2018 could be in excess of $100 million,” Ms Rickard said.
“These scams are very sophisticated and the scammers are very convincing. People aged 45 to 64 are most at risk and make up more than half the reports sent to Scamwatch.”
She said the vast majority of investment scams were still centred on traditional investment markets like stocks, real estate or commodities.
“For example, scammers will cold call victims claiming to be a stock broker or investment portfolio manager and offer a ‘hot tip’ or inside information on a stock or asset that is supposedly about to go up significantly in value,” Ms Rickard said.
“They will claim what they are offering is low-risk and will provide quick and high returns.”
She said the scammers would use the right technical language and also offer professional looking websites and documents to convince victims they were legitimate.
“It’s often only when people try to cash out their investment that they realise their money is gone,” Ms Rickard said.
