Scam ATO Tax Office Calls

[ethernet]

Recently I have got THREE fake ATO scam phone calls, with a suspiciously deep male British accent and a tone that you may have something to hide. Well, you can hang up and call the ATO back. Or ignore it - or bait the scammers.
Or you can tease the scammers with an inventive line about please stay on the line while this call is being traced by law enforcement. What is your name? What is your address. Thank you for your voice print.

 

[cove]

My work office did hang up on a genuine ATO call. Very funny because of his accent.

 

[jb747]

I know one, otherwise intelligent, person, who was sucked in by one of the Microsoft support calls. Thankfully, I found out before any harm was done. I’d hate to think how many elderly people are caught out by these criminals.

I heard of one who rang a person who seemed very gullible, and they stayed on the line, poking around in their computer for ages. It probably wasn’t a great idea though, as said person actually did work for Microsoft, and the computer they were allowed to poke in was a virtual one...whilst they were being looked at in return.

 

[Denali]

Our Insurance broker wife fell for a scammer.

ATO call that he's being held on a warrant for non payment and she paid thousands over the phone including buying iTunes cards (because the ATO takes iTunes cards??)

Changed brokers soon after. Couldn't deal with him without thinking about either his choice in a dumb spouse or her belief in his dodgy dealings.

 

[ethernet]

The other BIG red flag is automated trading scam. Make money while your computer uses our AI for stock arbitrage wins. The way this scam works is that you always win the first trades. To collect you have to register, login etc.
As soon as you connect a nasty remote control steals your bank password and account details, or digs in a part A, then part B so that AV products mostly miss them. Then overnight 1K to 200K is removed from you bank accounts(naturally unauthorised). That $100 bait was expensive.

Australian banks are awkward for the scammers, so sometimes they will ask you to reset transfer limits, so the sting cuts deeper. This would never happen if an OS company wrote secure code or allowed a non-leaky browser instance and failed to fix NSA? sourced hack troves.

So learn to set miserable daily spending limits often. There is no such thing as free money - unless it is handed out at election time.

 

[Max Samuels]

I keep a stock of iTunes gift cards handy so I can quickly pay my tax debt and avoid any "further arrests"..... LOL. At least hire someone that speaks English if you're going to imitate the ATO...