• Australians lost a record $851 million to scams in 2020, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission reports.
• The COVID-19 pandemic and widespread lockdowns left victims financially and emotionally vulnerable to financial exploitation.
• Scammers turned to Bitcoin over the year, with $26.6 million of the cryptocurrency siphoned away from victims.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Australians lost a record $851 million to scammers over 2020, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) reports, after criminals tailored their techniques to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly used Bitcoin transactions to siphon money from victims.

In its 12th annual Targeting Scams report, released Monday, the ACCC states Australians lost nearly $220 million more to scams than in 2019.

ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said those losses were driven by the uniquely disastrous circumstances of 2020, with scammers “quick to take advantage of crises in Australia.”

The ACCC and Scamwatch received 1,330 reports of scams linked to the devastating bushfire season, many of which offered victims fake tax rebates on donations to charities and firefighting organisations.

Later, the pandemic and its attendant restrictions provided opportunities for scammers to separate Australians from their money.

The report suggests that more time spent inside correlated with increased app and internet messaging usage, which exposed Australians to phishing scams, and robocallers impersonating the Australian Taxation Office, Services Australia, and other government organisations.

Australians lost some $6.4 million to superannuation scams, with the ACCC reporting criminals exploited the federal government’s emergency super withdrawal scheme to draw up to $20,000 from a victim’s retirement fund.

Particularly callous crooks preyed on fears of the COVID-19 pandemic itself.

“Health and medical scam reported losses increased more than 2,000% compared with 2019 as a result of the pandemic, reaching over $3.9 million,” the report states.

A combination of lockdowns and the overwhelming fear surrounding the virus saw Victorians lose $49 million to scams in 2020. That figure marks the most of any state, and the first time Victoria has topped that ignominious ranking.

“We think it is likely that this is because Victorians were in lockdown for the longest period, which may
have made people more susceptible” to some scamming activity, the ACCC said.

If the pandemic changed how scams worked, cryptocurrencies changed how those funds were transferred.

While bank transfers contributed to the greatest losses, Bitcoin was the second most profitable payment method for scammers. The ACCC counted 1,985 reports of Bitcoin-related scams, with losses totalling more than $26.6 million.

Scammers increasingly sought Bitcoin payments through romance scams, where criminals would ‘catfish’ victims on dating apps like Tinder, before offering fraudulent investing opportunities.

“The perceived anonymity of unregulated cryptocurrencies can impede the ability to recover funds or
identify scammers,” the ACCC noted. “It is likely that we will see increased use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the years to come.”

Of particular note was the increasing prevalence of ‘celebrity endorsement scams’, whereby scammers use the names and faces of notable Australians in social media advertising for fraudulent investment schemes.

These scams — which often call on victims to transfer Bitcoin to the scammer — cost at least $1.8 million in 2020.

However, the ACCC believes that “given the scale of individual losses reported in the media, we note that the actual losses to these scams were likely to be much higher.”

An ACCC consultation seeking evidence of these scams is open until September 4.

“The increasing losses and reports to the ACCC and other agencies demonstrate the need for a continued and concerted whole of community effort to raise awareness of, prevent and disrupt scams,” the report states.

Anyone who believes they may have been targeted by a scam can submit a report through ScamWatch.

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