Scammers posed as Australian police to steal crypto, authorities warn

[Curious T]

There is something I read here, I have forgotten how exactly it was said, but it means that scammers thrive on the stupidity of people. In what world would a person tell you to send your crypto to another address he provides for you, and you do it? How does that make sense? Even if it is the pope himself, it doesn't make sense. Sending it into an address you didn't create and don't have the private key of that address then you have no control of those coins. This should be like the crypto 101.

[Chibit01]

The AFP-led Joint Policing Cybercrime Coordination Centre found that the system’s design, which allows third parties to file reports on behalf of others, has been manipulated to reinforce these scams.

The scammers were able to exploit the system since people could report unbehalf of others. They will simply send false reports to Cybercrime Portal using stolen personal data. Using fake case number they contact thier victims. Since the information is coming from ReportCyber platform the fraudsters can easily contact victims pretending to be officers.

This is other level of criminal exercise. It is important to be careful even when it might be coming from respected authorities. Sensistive information like passwords or seedphrase should never be released to enable.

Scammers are becoming smart every single day and the are still being victimized for them. It can be very difficult thesedays to know what's a scam and what's legit. But anyway thanks to God that this strategy has been known. Right now the cybercrime officers have known how these scammers operates so they will be vigilant whenever they receive reports about any cybercrime. Since they now know that scammers message them with fake reports based on their victims personal information. I don't really know what the Internet is turning into because right now there are many scammers from different countries.

[Coyster]

Scammers are becoming smart every single day and the are still being victimized for them. It can be very difficult thesedays to know what's a scam and what's legit.

Smart? You mean people are becoming very gullible every day. That would be a better way to put it. It is very easy to avoid most scams out there, follow some simple rules: never send anyone your seed phrase or enter it in any website, it does not matter how urgent the call or email sounded, never do it. Don't click random links and store your coins in cold storage.

I don't really know what the Internet is turning into because right now there are many scammers from different countries.

You do not expect everyone to be upstanding, do you. There would always be bad actors waiting at every turn trying to take what's yours. It is your responsibility to protect what's yours and never lose it to these criminals.

[Ndabagi01]

This is popular here on my country,  we habe fake law enforcement agents that are busy defrauding unsuspecting victims,  but their most targets are the known scammers or fraudsters,  what they do is to set themselves up inviting fake EFCC to the victims and there by force their victims to make cryptocurrency transfers as a settlement to avoid jail.

But this is all fake.

In as much as their activities are not welcomed, it is very disheartening to see that your person you trust sets you up and get you screwed. Some EFCC officials are corrupt and many fraudsters are willing to give anything to compensate them in order not to get arrested. So they don’t even want to confirm if they’re real officials, they just clamp on them and they find their way to settle them and case closed.

Recently an EFCC officers was arrested for stealing $11900 that was seized from a fraudsters as exhibit,  so this types of scams are mostly done through the help of an insider.

When this type of fraudulent activities are prevalent, it comes to a point that even the real enforcement agencies will be doing their activities out of order. Just like the example you just gave, this is an enforcement agent that’s suppose to penalize and report funds recovers from scammers, but he went ahead and kept it to himself, that’s to show how the system can also have corrupt officials that makes others see them as all same greedy officials.

[Iroh]

People do need to be more careful and vigilant on who reaches out to you on the phone. These scammers are sadly preying on the ignorance and in some cases, plain stupidity in people. Also, people need to be more reasonable and think things thoroughly. If it doesn't make sense, voice out your concerns and ask questions. It's very unreasonable for the police to ask anyone to send crypto for whatever reasons.
But of course, there are still tons of gullible people out there who could be persuaded to send their crypto to another wallet by a scammer posing as the federal police.

[Cookdata]

There is something I read here, I have forgotten how exactly it was said, but it means that scammers thrive on the stupidity of people. In what world would a person tell you to send your crypto to another address he provides for you, and you do it? How does that make sense? Even if it is the pope himself, it doesn't make sense. Sending it into an address you didn't create and don't have the private key of that address then you have no control of those coins. This should be like the crypto 101.

This made me remember one post that was posted here last month about a trader that was apprehended by fake airport staffs that swept everything from his wallet including his Binance wallet and the airport is searching about on the individuals, this is not too different from that story which I don't think that guy was able to get his money till now. Here we have another one. Lmao.

"Can I see your ID", "Can I see your supervisor". These two statements is what many police don't like but any serious police will not hesitate to show you these two things. People need to be self aware that anyone can be fake. They need to ask questions and demand for answers for transparency so that ordinary people don't take advantage of them. I will be so piss if someone disguised as a police man and took everything from me, I'm going to hate cops even more.

[salad daging]

Reminds me of a scam that happened to my family in the past. Pretending to be a police officer or government agent, said our family is involved in a drug or accident and demands some funds to process their hospital room or something similar. Not surprisingly, it got recycled into another form of scam, considering how many grandparents fall for tricks like this. Looks like it isn't limited to older people now.

Have ever heard about this case and even in some Tiktok videos, many have shared videos of undercover police fraud and then asked the victim for money because someone's family was injured.

And many other types of fraud that the perpetrators do by arranging in such a way.

Now you just need to be careful because there are many types of online fraud now, and now I continue to see many other types of fraud so as not to be fooled again.

[Tungbulu]

People do need to be more careful and vigilant on who reaches out to you on the phone. These scammers are sadly preying on the ignorance and in some cases, plain stupidity in people. Also, people need to be more reasonable and think things thoroughly. If it doesn't make sense, voice out your concerns and ask questions. It's very unreasonable for the police to ask anyone to send crypto for whatever reasons.
But of course, there are still tons of gullible people out there who could be persuaded to send their crypto to another wallet by a scammer posing as the federal police.

It might interest you to know that majority of the scam attempts out there actually makes sense, and have a logical explanation and story backing them up, but that’s only for one is merely naive and ignorant. Unfortunately there are some attempts that even those who have been around the crypto space for quite some time could even fall victim to, due to how legit and authentic they may appear, and the only way to learn about such scams is through reading about a victim’s story and testimonies about that particular scam. Which is why I like to read about scam posts so I can enrich my knowledge and stay updated on the latest scam schemes in order to protect myself because the truth is that no one is above being scammed.

[SuperBitMan]

People do need to be more careful and vigilant on who reaches out to you on the phone. These scammers are sadly preying on the ignorance and in some cases, plain stupidity in people. Also, people need to be more reasonable and think things thoroughly. If it doesn't make sense, voice out your concerns and ask questions. It's very unreasonable for the police to ask anyone to send crypto for whatever reasons.
But of course, there are still tons of gullible people out there who could be persuaded to send their crypto to another wallet by a scammer posing as the federal police.

It might interest you to know that majority of the scam attempts out there actually makes sense, and have a logical explanation and story backing them up, but that’s only for one is merely naive and ignorant. Unfortunately there are some attempts that even those who have been around the crypto space for quite some time could even fall victim to, due to how legit and authentic they may appear, and the only way to learn about such scams is through reading about a victim’s story and testimonies about that particular scam. Which is why I like to read about scam posts so I can enrich my knowledge and stay updated on the latest scam schemes in order to protect myself because the truth is that no one is above being scammed.

Yes, no matter how knowledgeable you are you can still fall victim because this scammers usually update every time so what you think you know today may not be what we come for you tomorrow, recently someone would have hacked my WhatsApp he called me on phone and told me that my class group we are having a meeting in preparation of the get together we are about to have and that we are having a zoom meeting and that for me to join they will send me a code which I will use to join the meeting and he said he needs a code from me and they will send the code as a text message that if I send it to him he will not add me up in the zoom, do you know that I almost sent the number to him before someone told me I should wait that this may be a scam and I started asking him some question and that was how I knew it was all scam.
Same here too I usually like reading about scam issues in order to get updated of any new strategy this scammers are now using.

[letteredhub]

~

This is other level of criminal exercise. It is important to be careful even when it might be coming from respected authorities. Sensistive information like passwords or seedphrase should never be released to enable.

People out there have to be very careful when it's about their finance and shouldn't be in a haste to exercise fear and unrest because that's what these scammers breed on to gain success in their exploit. They make the case they reporting to you as a matter of urgency because it's the only way they can work on you while showing fear of losing your funds.

Having some knowledgeable tips on how to suspect a scam is a no-brainer and can save people from simply losing their funds to certain scam schemes they could have escaped from. Immediately an urgency is applied, request for certain vital informations like your personal data and password, these are tips to start suspecting that it could be a scam, and you must pause, put them on hold to verify through other reachable medium to the authority and your service provider.

[Tungbulu]

Yes, no matter how knowledgeable you are you can still fall victim because this scammers usually update every time so what you think you know today may not be what we come for you tomorrow, recently someone would have hacked my WhatsApp he called me on phone and told me that my class group we are having a meeting in preparation of the get together we are about to have and that we are having a zoom meeting and that for me to join they will send me a code which I will use to join the meeting and he said he needs a code from me and they will send the code as a text message that if I send it to him he will not add me up in the zoom, do you know that I almost sent the number to him before someone told me I should wait that this may be a scam and I started asking him some question and that was how I knew it was all scam.
Same here too I usually like reading about scam issues in order to get updated of any new strategy this scammers are now using.

lol this one is new
You see why it’s crucial to first be quiet and evaluate every situation before making decisions, if you had taken a moment to be quiet, even if it was just for a second or two, you would’ve been able to confirm the actual identity of the person who was attempting to impersonate someone you knew. Well it’s a good thing you had someone beside you who was able to remind you that you needed to give the situation a second thought.

With my knowledge and enlightenment about scammers and how they operate, I’ve been able to develop a level of skepticism that I question almost every single thing I come across, and this have helped me avoid most scam attempts that most people would have ordinarily fallen victim to.

[KiaKia]

So cops can call me now and tell me to move my bitcoin into a safer wallet address provided by them? There is no way this can work on me, because the cops in my country knows nothing about the safety of the blockchain.

I know better than them and I will tell them to not worry about my Bitcoin, if I lost it that is my problem, it is my hard earned money, even if the manufacturer of my hardware wallet ask me to move or do anything to my Bitcoin I won't.

This is impersonation and it is a great weapon that will likely work on anyone, this will be a big lesson to many readers on the forum, that no one cares about the safety of your Bitcoin than you.

If they claim that they know better, it is a sign that they they want to steal your Bitcoin, advise is all they needed to drop, not telling you to move your Bitcoin into something else.

I am happy that this lesson comes to light through someone else, this is the best thing I have read this month so far.

[JoyMarsha]

People need to be very careful but people also need not to be stupid. Even if you are talking with a police officer or an officer in charge of crime, why would you send bitcoin or crypto to the officer if he told you to do so? That is stupidity, although not officers but scammers that are doing it.

Out of fear of not being held responsible for an offense has made people not think straight, not to know their rights when it comes to matters relating to any crime they are to be held responsible for by police officers.

Many people easily get scared when an offense is laid against them; they won't want to follow it up with dueling, they would prefer to bribe themselves out of it. Some police officers will see that as an opportunity to dupe them because of fears they found in them.

If people would learn to follow up things in a right way, this case of sending crypto to people who are pretending to police officers would have being discovered that It's all scams, they shouldn't be trusted that way by sending crypto to them.

[CryptSafe]

By right, an officer is not meant to ask you for money when it involves official engagement except otherwise. If any officer does ask you for money, then they are fraudulently asking you to extort from you, and mind you, the law does not permit them to do so. So if anyone poses as an officer online and tells you to pay for anything, you should immediately report them, but before you do that, take the wallet address, their names, and other important information or details about them to ensure you report them to the appropriate authorities for further action. The information you have collected might not be the real information about them, but you can be able to track them with their wallet address if it is not a new one, maybe an old wallet they have been using to make it look like they are for real, as the wallet is quite active.

[DYING_S0UL]

You can read the news in full on https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fraudsters-exploit-australia-cybercrime-portal-072826206.html

People need to be very careful but people also need not to be stupid. Even if you are talking with a police officer or an officer in charge of crime, why would you send bitcoin or crypto to the officer if he told you to do so? That is stupidity, although not officers but scammers that are doing it.

Yeah I read that article of yours you provided but one thing I don't quite understand how are they targeting these victims? How do they know whether I own Crypto or not? I mean, It's not like I have my Bitcoin holding history saved in a public server or anything that can be leaked nor I am shouting heyy I bought 10 BTC. I understand the data leak part, but the fact about owning Crypto is also a private thing.. have any thoughts on how? Is it via social media engineering?