CANBERRA, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Australians lost 256 million U.S. dollars to online fraudsters last year, according to consumer data revealed on Monday.
In its ninth annual report into cybercrime, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) revealed that online fraud was at record levels in 2017, with more than 200,000 scam reports being submitted to the ACCC, Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) and other federal and state-based agencies.
Investment scams were responsible for the heaviest losses at 48 million U.S. dollars, an increase of more than 8 percent on 2016. Dating and romance fraud was the second-worst category, being responsible for the theft of 32 million U.S. dollars.
ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard voiced her concern over Australians "losing such extraordinary amounts to scammers."
"Based on just the reports provided to the ACCC, victims are losing an average of 6,500 Australian dollars (4,900 U.S. dollars). In some cases, people have lost more than 1 million Australian dollars (750,000 U.S. dollars)," she said in a statement on Monday.
"Some scams are becoming very sophisticated and hard to spot.
"In the past few years, reports indicate scammers are using aggressive techniques both over the phone and online."
Rickard said some of the scamming techniques can be very frightening. "For example, scammers will impersonate the Australian Taxation Office and threaten people with immediate arrest unless they pay an outstanding tax bill. They may pretend to be from Telstra to try to hack into your computer or from Centrelink promising extra payments in return for a 'fee'," she said.
"Scammers scare us or butter us up with promises of cash because they know it clouds our judgement. People get so worried about being arrested they don't question if the person threatening them is genuine."
Anti-scam IT specialist Ziggy Zapata told one news outlet that the ACCC had underestimated the true cybercrime figure.
"The reason is that most people are too embarrassed to go to police and in most cases, there is no redress because the scammers are well out of Australian legal jurisdiction," Zapata said on Monday.
