Coronavirus: ATO issues fraud reminder to protect personal details

Authorities have urged people to be vigilant with personal information after fraudsters tried to access retirement savings.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw at the Senate inquiry on Thursday. Picture: AAP

Government authorities have urged Australians to be vigilant with personal information after fraudsters tried to access up to $120,000 in retirement savings.

Australian Taxation Office commissioner Chris Jordan confirmed to a COVID-19 Senate hearing on Thursday that “some limited fraudulent activity” had been identified in connection to the government’s superannuation early access scheme and had been immediately acted upon.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw told the hearing the “quite sophisticated” alleged fraud was detected by financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC on April 30 and was referred to the AFP the next day.

He said the AFP had since execute­d five search warrants and was investigating whether organ­ised crime and offshore players were involved.

Mr Kershaw said the AFP had frozen up to 150 attacked accounts, connected to more than one superannuation provider.

As part of the government’s multi-billion-dollar economic assistan­ce package, Australians who are struggling financially can ­access $10,000 from their super this financial year and the same again next financial year.

Mr Jordan dismissed reports the tax office had been hacked, stressing that Australians should keep their personal information private, including not sharing their tax file numbers with others.

“I would really … emphasise that people keep personal inform­ation secure and private,” he said.

Since the rollout of the Morrison government’s coronavirus eco­nomic response measures, the AFP has established Taskforce Iris to investigate whether organised crime or other players are seeking to defraud the program.

“The reason we’ve created that taskforce is we anticipate more referrals­,” Mr Kershaw said.

Mr Jordan said such criminal activity was disappointing but unsurprisi­ng. “Whenever cash is given out, you’ll get an element of criminality and attempts to access that cash,” he said.

Opposition assistant Treasury spokesman Stephen Jones said he suspected the activity was probably “the tip of the iceberg”.

“This is not about the IT system — it’s about the process the governmen­t put in place, which is inherently flawed,” he said.

Anthony Albanese has previously said Australians should never have been able to access their retirement savings early.

“We should be ensuring that superannuation is for people’s retirem­ent,” the Opposition Leader said.

“The government has to explain­ why it is that the mechan­isms weren’t in place to protect people’s savings.”

About $9bn has been released from 1.1 million super accounts.

Mr Kershaw flagged that the AFP had also detected a doubling of child abuse material on the dark web compared to last year.

The Australian revealed last week that the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation’s triage­ unit had been inundated over the past month with reports from the community about children being targeted online by pedophiles seeking to make contact.

“We’ve had an increase in our referrals of 123 per cent between October 2019 and March 2020 compared to the previous year,” the AFP Commissioner said.