Vigilante ‘scam hunter’ warns of more sophisticated fraudsters

A Brisbane man who started hunting down online fraudsters about five years ago says scams are becoming far more sophisticated as information from data breaches is used to target victims.

He’s Australia’s unofficial cyber-criminal hunter.

Brisbane man “Chris Peacock” (not his real name) is an IT expert who chases online crooks as a hobby.

From puppy and romance scam perpetrators through to bank scammers, Mr Peacock goes after them to try to save more people from being ripped off.

He “baits” scammers and then reports fake websites and fraudulent accounts to authorities and banks – including 784 scam accounts this year alone.

The one-man vigilante says he started hunting down online fraudsters about five years ago after a mate lost thousands of dollars trying to buy a motorbike from a fake website.

“It was his dream and he’d been saving up for a long time,” Mr Peacock said.

“It was a very early version of what I call non-delivery fraud, which just skyrocketed once Covid hit. The amount of fake websites exploded.”

Mr Peacock said many victims reached out to him after he became involved with a group called Puppy Scam Awareness Australia.

“What you have to understand with non-delivery fraud is that the puppy scams, that’s their (the cyber-criminals’) pocket money,” he said.

Scam hunter “Chris Peacock” searching for scammers from his computer at home.

“The same people that are scamming someone for a puppy is scamming someone else for a shipping container or a tractor – you name it, if there’s a market out there, they will have a fake website.”

Mr Peacock said most of the non-delivery frauds were run out of Nigeria and Cameroon and were controlled by four major crime syndicates – Black Axe, Air Lords, Buccaneers and Illuminati.

“I bait them (scammers) – I’ll actively go out and pretend that I want to buy a jet ski or a pinball machine or whatever, with the goal of collecting information and trying to piece the puzzle together,” he said.

“It’s a lot more difficult with these bank and investment scams because they’re normally contacting you (victims) and they’ve got a fair bit of information about you already from data breaches and so on.

“A lot of people don’t understand how easy it is to (fake) a phone number and make it look as if you’re calling from anywhere.”

Mr Peacock said he believed the latest bank scams were being run out of Hong Kong or Singapore.

“They’re fairly sophisticated, not like someone in a two-bit call centre out of Calcutta reading off a script with poor English,” he said.

“These people (bank scammers) are obviously educated and generally speak with a British accent. My guess is they’re getting their information from data breaches to target victims.”

Mr Peacock said the scammers often laundered their ill-gotten gains by buying cryptocurrency or gift cards.

He said he had been able to retrieve thousands of dollars for some victims after proving that banks had been made aware of scam accounts but failed to act.

Mr Peacock said banks needed to be held accountable for allowing online accounts to be set up using stolen ID.

“I don’t believe banks share enough information between them, because I’ve seen the same identities being set up for accounts across multiple banks,” he said.