‘Don’t fall into the money trap’: WA Police and Crime Stoppers warn Great Southerners against scammers’ tricks

WA Police’s head of financial and cyber crime and the State’s Crime Stoppers boss have joined forces to warn Great Southern residents to be on the watch for money traps set by scammers.

Det-Supt Peter Foley and Crime Stoppers’ Dr Vince Hughes have taken the message warning against money laundering and the traps scammers set across the State, most recently to an Albany Chamber of Commerce and Industry event on October 16.

International workers, business owners, and the elderly are some of those most vulnerable to targeting by fraudsters.

Det-Supt Foley said that in the Great Southern many crooks compromise business emails and take over domains to target large cash flows, specifically big government projects.

“Where there’s infrastructure projects, and government-tendered projects, they know bills will get paid on time, and good-sized invoices get paid, so these crooks will work out who are the companies involved,” he said.

“They’ll look at their email addresses and they’ll register an email address with maybe one very slight character change, and engage the other company and say, ‘oh, we’re changing our bank accounts, can you please change your bank accounts?’ And so they do.

“The next minute there’s an invoice being paid but it has been diverted away to organised crime.

“That’s called business email compromise and unfortunately, it is being reported in the Great Southern.

“Something like the $40 million tender to upgrade the airport announced the other day will be one they will be watching.”

Businesses were also warned to protect their workforce, especially international students, backpackers and seasonal workers.

“Our backpackers, which are very important to the Australian economy, are targeted because they are away from home and may not be that savvy with our financial systems,” Det-Supt Foley said.

“If they are approached with an opportunity to make some dollars on the side in the short term, they’re getting proceeds of crime and putting it through low-value, high (volume) transactions, and into the Australian financial system and are legitimising bad money.

“They may not be allowed back in the country and are subject to money laundering investigations because all this money’s gone through their account, so they are really exposing themselves for a whole lot of reasons.”

Some of the most “heartbreaking” cases seen in the Great Southern are those involving elderly people, or “non-cyber natives” who may not be technologically savvy and who have been targeted socially by scammers.

“The saddest comment that we’ve had is that the scammers are the only people they are talking to everyday,” Det-Supt Foley said.

“They may be isolated, or have dementia creeping in and these people will run up the confidence as part of it, they’ll engage them for weeks and months consistently to just wrap them up.

“We have seen retired people lose hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in savings, losing everything — they are set to retire with a nice lifestyle and then are suddenly within the welfare range.”

Dr Hughes said the strategy to deal with such scams is simple.

What we’re trying to do is turn something that’s a bit sophisticated and complex into a very simple message: don’t trust, verify.

“In the case of businesses, ring up the company who they are reporting to be and verify it is legitimate.

“Report any signs of unlawful activity, look after and check on your vulnerable people, and don’t allow your bank account to be used.”

He said shame and embarrassment often stopped victims of cyber crime from reporting it, but speed was of the essence and reports can be made anonymously for yourself or others, via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or crimestopperswa.com.au.