Commercial and internet fraud is prevalent and often originates outside Australia. Many scammers approach you out of the blue pretending to be legitimate banks or businesses. Genuine organisations don’t usually contact you out of the blue and ask for passwords or account numbers. Scams have a devastating financial and emotional impact on many Australians. Once money is sent overseas it is virtually impossible to recover.

Victims have been defrauded and those who travel to the originating country have had their lives endangered. Some victims have been killed. Criminals have been known to seek details of 'safe' bank accounts overseas in which to transfer large sums of money (as a donation or for a percentage of the amount involved). They may also provide fake cashier cheques for 'urgent' shipments of large quantities of goods, request sizeable fees for a fake government contract or to supply crude oil and extort money from individuals they have convinced to travel overseas for a business opportunity. If you are a victim of a financial scam, we advise you to obtain legal advice and not to travel overseas to seek restitution as there is a risk of physical assault from the perpetrators.

There have also been reports of phone calls and emails to relatives and friends in Australia from bogus hospitals or doctors overseas claiming that an Australian traveller has been injured and money is required to be sent for medical treatment. Your relatives and friends in Australia should make sure that the contact is genuine as this is a common method of extorting money. Treat any requests for money from overseas with caution. Check the story through a web search, or call the organisation back but only through a publicly advertised number eg yellow pages or other reputable directories, rather than the contact details the potential scammer has sent you. Never use the organisations’ contact details given by the person requesting the information.

Some Australians have also been defrauded or had their lives endangered by bogus internet friendship, dating and marriage schemes operating outside Australia. These scams typically result from connections made through internet dating schemes or chat rooms. Once a virtual relationship develops, the Australian citizen is asked by their friend or prospective marriage partner to send money to enable travel to Australia. Once the money has been received, the relationship is usually terminated and any chance of recovering the funds is highly unlikely. In some instances, foreigners who have travelled overseas to meet their friend or prospective marriage partner have been kidnapped and held to ransom.

Australians are encouraged to report scams, scammers and fakes to the federal government’s SCAMwatch website at www.scamwatch.gov.au or phone 1300 795 995.

More information about scams can be found in The Little Black Book of Scams published by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Tel 1300 302 502 or visit their website at www.accc.gov.au