Australian Financial Regulator Cracks Down on Crypto Scams, Slashing $1.3 Billion in Losses

Key Points:

• Australian financial regulator ASIC coordinated the removal of over 600 cryptocurrency scams last year as part of broader efforts.
• Investment scam losses fell from $1.5 billion to $1.3 billion due to ASIC and NASC efforts.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has rolled out various initiatives in an effort to eliminate crypto scams, resulting in more than 600 fraudulent crypto and monetary platforms being taken down over the past year.

Read more: Australian Taxation Office Demands Crypto Exchanges Surrender Data of 1.2M Users!

Australian Financial Regulator Aims at Cryptocurrency Scams

These activities are a small part of broader operations that scrapped 5,530 fake investment websites and 1,065 phishing scam links. Very often, cybercriminals use the tactic of impersonating news stories and deepfake videos about public figures in order to mislead victims—and, as such, make it more difficult for customers and regulators to identify.

The Australian financial regulator works with third-party cybercrime experts who refer sites suspected of hosting scams, and these shut such platforms within the shortest time, usually in a matter of hours, once malicious activities are established. This plan is zeroing in on sites impersonating real investment firms and phishing cryptocurrency trading platforms.

Investment Scam Losses Drop After ASIC and NASC Interventions

Although the cases of crypto-related scams maximized during the Bitcoin halving event in April, recent data shows a month-over-month decline. Of course, this progress would not have been possible without ASIC‘s disruption strategy, which includes cooperation with the National Anti-Scam Centre. NASC’s efforts resulted in investment scam losses dropping from $1.5 billion to $1.3 billion within a year.

Notwithstanding these gains, sophisticated technologies used by scammers remain a challenge. The Australian financial regulator will continue the public education process through its Moneysmart website. It provides information and tips to assist in spotting scams and how people can avoid them. The commission advises consumers to stop communicating with the suspected entity and to carefully check any investment opportunity before committing to the transaction.

Although the problem remains at an incredibly high level—with $2.77 billion lost to scams in Australia last year alone—the recent downward trend shows that all that awareness and protective effort is finally starting to bear fruit.