- Call centers avoided targeting Americans because they did not want the FBI to track them.
- Australians are targeted because the AFP is less likely to go after fraudsters.
A former Ukrainian call center worker said Australians were targeted by cryptocurrency scam calls because they were perceived as “easy prey”.
Mark (pseudonym), who moved to Ukraine, initially joined the cryptocurrency fraud company because of the salary he would receive. He eventually left the organization but admits Australians were the number one target of scam calls during his time with the company.
“I heard Australians have a lot of money and good salaries,” he told ABC News.
“Since I’ve been in the industry, they’ve never targeted an American because they believe the U.S. government reacts to things like that, and in the next few months you’ll be arrested.”
A call center employee said that during his nine-hour workday, he targeted Australia, New Zealand and Asian countries in the morning and then moved to Europe in the afternoon. Speaking to around 20 Australians, Mark explained that they often made half their money by investing it in fraudulent cryptocurrency scams.
It’s harder to catch.
Most call centers around the world have the United States on their do-not-call lists, said Ken Gamble, a private investigator who runs fraud recovery firm IFW Global. This is because of the fear that the FBI will track them.
“There is no such fear in Australia because traditionally the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has not gone after these fraudsters,” Gamble added.
According to Gamble, the perception that Australians are being labeled as easy prey is making it difficult to stop the spread of fraud. According to Australian government ScamWatch data, there were approximately 8,600 reports of fraud, including cryptocurrency scams, in 2023. These frauds resulted in losses of approximately $206 million.
Pieter Boele is one of the Australians who has become a victim. The 82-year-old, who is enjoying retirement in Sydney, received an email featuring a journalist endorsing a cryptocurrency trading platform.
Unfortunately, Boele didn’t realize the article was fake until it was too late. “It’s my fault for going into this without realizing it was dangerous,” said Boele, who lost nearly $700,000.
Despite the difficulties in tackling cryptocurrency fraud, the AFP is working to disrupt these criminal organizations. Some of the ways this is being done is through the Joint Policing and Cyber Crime Coordination Center (known as JPC3) and the recently launched Operation Firestorm.
But according to Gamble, despite the good work JPC3 is doing, it is not “capable of dealing with the fraud that comes into Australia every day”.