Rise of Scammer Impersonating Firms, Warns ASIC

ASIC issued an official warning last week on Thursday alarming users that the Australian market is currently rampant with scammers that have moved to impersonating investment firms. The aim of these is to cheat investors out of their money.

ASIC states that scammers were using popular outlets such as Gmail and Outlook accounts to correspond with users. Scammers use these channels to legitimize their frauds by sending to investors brochure and well-crafted material in order to fool users. The material is both convincing and can look very authentic, making it very dangerous, warns ASIC.

At times there might be direct bank details or crypto addresses into which investors are asked to send money to, with promises that these payments would activate their accounts. On top of that, brokers make unsolicited calls to clients and can keep on the connection by means of texts and messages; all aimed at defrauding the client by staging a relationship with them.

Furthermore, the Australian regulator warned against clone firms that ask people for direct access to their PCs via softwares like TeamViewer and AnyDesk. The watchdog mentioned that “If someone asks you for remote access, it is probably a scam.”

ASIC is definitely not the only supervisor to raise awareness of these schemes; regulators from the UK and the EU have continued to push the fight with fraudsters.