What are some of the common online scams?

The classical online scam is called the Nigerian scam.  This is a scam where the scammer contacts you promising an enormous bounty they say they won the lottery or that they stand to receive an enormous inheritance or a divorce settlement or all that there is some sort of bank error in their favour. However the catch is that they need to be paid a small amount of money compared to the enormous bounty in order to release the funds they may say this amount is needed to pay for costs such as bank filing fees, lawyers or attorney fees, court filing fees or other comparatively small incidental costs which will allow them to access the much larger amount and then pay you a share of this amount.  If you send the money they will simply pocket the money and continue asking for more money. You will never see this money again as it is a classical behaviour that these people are based in countries like Nigeria where there are no controls or legal ramifications which can practically be enforced against people for doing this type of thing.

What protection is there under Australian law?

There are a number of organisations that assist with these types of problems. In New South Wales the office of fair trading maintains a website called scam watch which lists active scams and advises consumers on how to identify scams and keeps active list of known scams which are currently being perpetrated.   Also you can help others by reporting on scams so that they can see the scams that are in existence on the scam watch website.  In formal legal terms in the scam is committing a number of crimes such as fraud, obtaining benefit by deception, creating false instruments, misrepresentation, misleading and deceptive conduct and if they were subject to Australian jurisdiction would most likely face heavy jail terms with the full force of the law used to prosecute them.

If you think you might be the victim of a scam or a scam is in progress against you and you would like some advice please do not hesitate to contact us using the contact form to the right or you can chat with us online alternatively you can place your question in question box below.