Australian Investors Lost $242 Million To Crypto Fraud This Year
- Australian crypto investors have already lost $242 million to crypto scams, as almost three months are left before the year ends, as per the latest data from Scamwatch.
- The investors who are above the age of 55 and under 64 years of age are the ones who have lost the most due to an increase in the number of crypto scams and investment fraud.
According to a recent data from Scamwatch, Australia continues to witness a large amount of investors getting duped by crypto-related scams, losing around $236 million (242.5 millon Australian dollars) to notorious elements so far this year.
Data shows that the majority of funds lost to scams between January 2022 and July 2022 were crypto investment scams, including romance baiting scams and classic Ponzi schemes.
Unfortunately, the sum is already 36% higher than the overall 2021 figures, which showed that the citizens lost 178.2 million AUD to investment scams during the year. In order to “drive greater investment in stopping fraud,” consumer activists are calling on banks to take on more responsibility for compensating scams.
Notably, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on September 8 that advocacy organizations are pressing for reforms that would require banks to verify that the recipient’s name matches the account name when money is transferred online.
“The key reform is to shift that liability from individual consumers to banks when it comes to scam losses. They [banks] ask you for the account name, but they don’t actually check,”
Consumer Action Law Center Chief Executive Gerard Brody stated at the time.
Remember that Australia’s Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the nation’s primary financial regulator, indicated in August that it plans to devote a substantial amount of attention to cryptocurrencies and DeFi over the course of the next four years.
As “emerging technologies and products change [Australia’s] financial ecosystem,” it aims to concentrate on “digitally enabled misconducts” as part of its four-year strategic “Corporate Plan” that runs through 2026.
Joe Longo, the organization’s chair, issued another warning against crypto investment in an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, calling it “a highly risky and volatile activity” and advising users to “be really careful” before they try their hands in it.
Last month, the Australian Federal Police put together a dedicated team in order to monitor crypto transfers as they believed these blockchain based assets to be an “emerging threat” that have been the cause of the rise in financial crimes and scams in the past few days.
The the Australian Labor Party (ALP) also announced a “token mapping” exercise in an attempt to regulate the rapidly expanding crypto industry, while the Australian arm of the world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance, Binance Australia, confirmed that it will improve the customer onboarding process and make the process more strict and tighten the security features.
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
