Private eyes called in as crypto scammers’ Aussie victims lose tens of millions

Desperate fraud victims are ­calling in private investigators to try to recover tens of millions of dollars stolen in cryptocurrency scams.

Desperate fraud victims are ­calling in private investigators to try to recover tens of millions of dollars stolen through rampant cryptocurrency scams.

Fraudulent celebrity advertisements on Facebook are fuelling the sophisticated scams, with authorities putting the social media giant on notice that it is being investigated for facilitating vast Australian losses.

Private investigations firm IFW Global says it is being inundated with requests from victims to recover funds from “crypto scams”, some lured in through slick online ads.

“They’re using the crypto hype to get people in,” chairman Ken Gamble said.

“Since last week we’ve received $20m worth of complaints. Almost all of that is from Australia. One client alone has lost $12m. Another client lost $5.3m.”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was revealed last week to be ­investigating Facebook with the intention of launching Federal Court proceedings over ads linked to the scams and featuring mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest.

The ads, falsely claiming the Fortescue Metals Group chair made his fortune via cryptocurrency, have appeared as sponsored posts in Facebook news feeds.

Dr Forrest at the time confirmed through his spokesman he was pursuing legal action against Facebook on behalf of scam victims for failing to stop his name and image being used in the ads.

Actor Mel Gibson and billionaires Bill Gates and Richard ­Branson are among others fraudulently used to market scams in ads on Facebook and via Google, supplementing traditional cold-calling techniques.

Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest is not really promoting that cryptocurrency deal. Picture: David Swift

And neither is Australian actor Mel Gibson.

Mr Gamble said Israeli organised crime groups in particular, with call centres throughout ­eastern Europe, were targeting Australians.

“People are lured in by very ­attractive looking, slickly made digital marketing videos to a trading platform,” he said.

“Then they pay a very small fee of around $250 to register. Once they start putting money in, they start getting calls from very high-pressure salesmen.”

Sales staff pretended to be in cities such as London but were ­actually operating from call centres in areas including Bulgaria, Serbia and Cyprus, he said.

One of IFW Global’s clients is a NSW woman who has reported losing almost half a million dollars, her life savings, to a fake crypto trader called Victoria Coins.

“I had money in the bank and it was my only opportunity to ever get a house,” the client told The Australian, asking for her name to be withheld.

“I’m now unable to pay rent. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t get the money back. It makes me sick I got so sucked in.”

Victoria Coins, named in a scam alert on IFW’s website since September, did not respond by deadline to a request for a ­response.

The ACCC’s Scamwatch ­website received complaints of $109m in losses to cryptocurrency scams between January and ­November – a 172 per cent ­increase on the total for the whole of last year.

The consumer watchdog’s chairman, Rod Sims, said Facebook and YouTube had to take “more responsibility” for the ads on their platforms.

A Facebook spokeswoman said ads that deceptively using public figures violated the platform’s policies.

“We’re committed to keeping these people off our platform and are co-operating with the ACCC’s investigation into this matter,” she said.

Facebook has previously taken legal action against people who have used “cloaking” to disguise the true content of ads from the platform’s review systems.