27% of clients provided personal identifying information to scammers, increasing the risk to possible future identity crime victimisation.
ATO scam reports have recently shown an increasing trend in scammer payments via Bitcoin, with $11,459 being paid in April. This brings the total reported payments via Bitcoin to $36,429 this year.
With the emerging popularity of bitcoin as a preferred scammer payment method, the ATO has recently issued a media release titled Beware bitcoin tax scammers warning the community on ATO impersonation scammers requesting payments by bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.
We reached out to our international counterparts to see if this was a global trend. Other revenue collection agencies confirmed they were seeing similar activity and distributed their own version of the media release.
Through regular engagement with our international partners we are able to initiate a collaborative approach to scam awareness and disruption tactics around the globe.
ATO Impersonation scam April 2018 monthly intelligence report; providing a snapshot of scam intelligence received by the ATO and the education and awareness strategies the ATO are undertaking to disrupt scammer activity.