A federal crackdown on employment scams has closed down more than 29,000 fake social media accounts in a seven-month blitz.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said the National Anti-Scam Centre’s Job Scam Fusion Cell removed the accounts and 1850 associated fake job advertisements between September 2024 and March this year.
Ms Lowe said from 2022 to 2023, financial losses due to job scams increased by 151 percent.
She said in 2024, Scamwatch received more than 3000 reports of job scams, with reported losses totalling $13.7 million and averaging 5.1 percent higher than for all other scam types.
“Job scams have been one of the fastest growing scam types, as scammers are increasingly preying on people seeking relief from cost-of-living pressures.
“These scams disproportionately impact people on low incomes, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, international students, non-resident visa holders, people with caring responsibilities, and others with limited employment options.”
Ms Lowe said job scams resulted in significant financial losses and put people at risk of identity theft through loss of personal information.
“That’s why we’ve worked collaboratively to disrupt these scams through intelligence-sharing, awareness campaigns, and targeted interventions.”
She said key initiatives undertaken and implemented by the Job Scam Fusion Cell included:
- Working with Meta to remove 29,000 accounts sharing job scam content.
- Referring 836 scammer cryptocurrency wallets to digital currency exchanges for analysis and investigation, leading to blocking and blacklisting of wallets.
- Referring 1850 scam enablers such as websites and scam job advertisements for removal.
- Disrupting scammers’ impersonation of Australian Government entities, such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Home Affairs, and APSJobs.
- Holding awareness and prevention forums with organisations across the tertiary education sector to enable them to deliver scams awareness messaging.
- Coordinating a social media campaign, tailored for at-risk groups.
- Creating guides for businesses, including about how to protect themselves and the community from impersonation of their business and regarding identification and disruption of Job Scam Payments.
- Establishing data sharing arrangements with cryptocurrency platforms
Job and employment scams explained:
- Scammers advertise job opportunities so they can steal money and personal information. Stop and check any job ad that requires payment of money to make money. It could be a scam.
- Scammers offer jobs that claim to pay well with low effort. But it’s only the scammer that will make money in the end. Often the job doesn’t exist at all.
- Scammers pretend to be hiring on behalf of high-profile companies and online shopping platforms. They also impersonate well-known recruitment agencies.
- Scammers may make contact unexpectedly through text message or encrypted message platforms like WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram.
- Scammers often ask for payment claiming it is required so you can start the role and get the income they’ve promised. Don’t enter any arrangement that asks for up-front payment via bank transfer, PayID or cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin or USDT. It’s rare to get money back that is sent this way.
- Don’t trust a job ad is real just because it appears on a trusted platform or website – scammers post fake ads too. If you come across a scammer, report it to the platform or agency and to scamwatch.gov.au.
- Never send passport, identity documents, or bank account details to an employer or recruitment firm unless certain they are genuine.
