Deloitte Trio Dodge Inquiry Bullet, For Now
Scam, sleep and scam again. Inside the scam facility behind those annoying text messages
Out in the desert on the outskirts of Dubai sits a secret scam factory capable of swindling tens of thousands of people at a time.
Inside, the scammers smoke, eat and furiously type on their computers as they pretend to be wealthy Eastern European women or models from Spain.
At least some of the millions of scam text messages baiting foreigners, including Australians, come from this place. It's a sophisticated operation, seemingly out of reach of the victims they target.
But last year the syndicate was uncovered following the chance meeting of an Australian divorcee, a private detective, a YouTube scam-baiter and one of the scammers himself, who worked from the inside to take the operation down.
The
top four tax scams targeting Australians this tax season | Accountants Daily
As we
enter tax season, authorities are already warning Australians are to be on
high alert for tax scams. Cybercriminals are amping up their scam
activity, with a predicted 400% increase of scams during EOFY.
14 June 2024
Alarmingly,
this year has seen a rise in impersonsation scams targeting individuals during
tax time, a period when people are more likely to engage with financial and
government agencies and official communication from the Australian Tax Office
(ATO). Scammers exploit this heightened activity by posing as ATO
representatives, sending fraudulent emails, texts, or making phone calls to
steal personal information and money from hard-working Australians.
Small and
medium businesses are especially at risk because AI-powered scams are becoming
more sophisticated and convincing making it harder to identify a scam attempt.
This highlights the importance of staying alert this tax season. This article
outlines the top four scams to be aware of this financial year (FY23/24) and
provide tips on how to avoid falling victim to them.
Impersonation
Scams On The Rise
myGov Email
Impersonation Scams
There has
been a surge in phishing scams targeting myGov accounts, with scammers
cleverly disguising creating fake ATO emails containing links that encourage
people to click on a link that directs them to fake myGov sign in pages
designed to steal their username and password. This tactic is proving highly
effective, with ATO-branded emails being the most commonly reported scam
in February 2024. Over the past six months, a staggering 75% of all email
scams reported to the ATO involved a fake myGov login link. This
highlights just how widespread and sophisticated these phishing attempts have become.
The ultimate goal of these scams is to steal your myGov credentials.
Scammers are
also exploiting other digital channels such as SMS messaging to get individuals
to click on fake myGov sign in pages designed to steal their username and
password. Scammers use different phrases to trick people into opening these
links. Some examples are:
- 'You are due to receive an ATO
Direct refund'
- ‘You have a new message in your
myGov inbox – click here to view”
- 'You need to update your
details to allow your Tax return to be processed'
- 'We need to verify your
incoming tax deposit'
- 'ATO Refund failed due to
incorrect BSB/Account number'
- ‘Your income statement is
ready, click on the link to view’
ATO Social
Media Impersonation Accounts Scams
This scam is
popular on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok etc.). These
scams are impersonating both the ATO itself and ATO employees. The intent
is to get you to interact with the pages, send messages, and ask questions with
the end goal of tricking you into sharing personal information such as email
addresses, phone numbers and bank account details.
How can you utilise the small
business restructure process to clean up old debt?
The ATO does
have an official presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, all of which hold
the blue tick of authentication. You can see in the two screenshots below that
there is no blue tick for authentication, and the follower counts are very low.
