Australia’s ASIC shuts down over 600 crypto scam websites in year-long crackdown

Australia’s financial regulator, ASIC, announced on Sunday that it has been actively closing down numerous fraudulent websites involved in scam investments. These scams often appear on social media and falsely use endorsements from celebrities to deceive users. Since July 2023, ASIC has taken down over 5,500 fraudulent investment sites. In addition to this, it has removed more than 1,000 phishing links and shut down 615 crypto scam websites.

Investigation Reveals Misuse of Celebrity Images in Crypto Ads

Over the past year, scams, especially those involving fake trading platforms, have resulted in an estimated $1.3 billion. Most of these scams relied on news stories, deep fake videos with local personalities, and locally based entities. All of the fake websites that ASIC took down, most of them were linked to these types of scams.

Speaking for ASIC, Deputy Chair Sarah Court said that despite these improvements, Australians are still falling victim to scams, losing billions of dollars every year. The scammers are targeting hard-working Australians and use all sorts of techniques to steal their information and money; every day alone, 20 scam investment websites are being taken down to ensure Australians do not continue to fall prey to these scammers.

Similarly, in a recent development, Australian police examined more than 2,000 compromised crypto wallets. This is due to several issues, particularly regarding the advertisement of cryptos. Meta recently, but last week, Australia’s attack on its competition showed that 50% of the cryptocurrency exchange platforms that promoted their services on Meta’s platform tricked users or broke the ad rules. These ads are often misleading, using images of famous Australians and Hollywood celebrities.

In 2024, there were more than 3,400 investment scam reports lodged in Australia, with an aggregate loss of over $78 million. The competition watchdog believes that there are approximately 600 ads that are potentially non-compliant with Meta’s policies, with the current focus being on 234 of them. The commission hopes that as their investigation progresses more potentially deceptive crypto ads will be found.