Australia Cracks Down on Cryptocurrency Investment Scams

Australia’s financial regulator announced today that it has removed 615 cryptocurrency investment scams over the past year as part of a broader crackdown on investment fraud schemes.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) stated on Monday that it has taken down over 7,300 scam websites since July 2023, with 615 associated with cryptocurrency.

Citing a report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the regulator noted that investment scams resulted in about $1.3 billion in losses in 2023.

“Australians are still losing billions of dollars each year to scams,” said Sarah Court, Deputy Chair of ASIC. “Scammers are criminals targeting the hip pockets of hard-working Australians – they don’t discriminate, and they use sophisticated techniques to steal information and money.”

ASIC explained that it dismantled a major crypto scam website, Dexa Trade Markets, which falsely claimed to be internationally regulated and reported billions in trading volume and millions of investors. “The take-down occurred an hour after ASIC referred the website to the takedown provider,” the regulator noted.

Crypto investment scams continue to be a critical issue for regulators. Recently, a ruling in Australia indicated that the ACCC alleged that more than half of crypto-related advertisements on Facebook were either scams or violated Meta’s policies, according to The Guardian.

Meanwhile, Google is facing a lawsuit from a Florida woman who claimed to have lost $5 million to a scam crypto app downloaded from the Google Play Store, alleging that Google took three months to remove the scam app.