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The 101 ways Google serves up Australians to known scammers

Using the world’s biggest search platform to find information on scams can deliver victims straight into the arms of criminals.

The Age, ByAisha Dow and Charlotte Grieve, November 18, 2024

oogle searches are delivering Australians into the arms of fraudsters, as websites and advertisements belonging to scammers are prominently served up to users on the world’s most popular search engine.

In some instances, Google searches provide some scam victims false reassurance that they are investing in legitimate companies.

Once they’ve lost their money, scam victims searching for help on Google are then being shown ads that direct them to a new set of criminals, known as recovery scammers, who claim they can retrieve people’s lost money for a fee, but instead disappear with the cash.

The findings are part of a months-long investigation into how investment scammers use some of the world’s biggest tech companies to find victims.

This masthead found that Google presents scam sites to users, even after those scams were the subject of explicit government warnings.

One example is the scam platform Bitcoin Evolution, which was blacklisted by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority in 2020. In March, Australian authorities placed it on an investor alert list, declaring it “not to be trusted”.

But this month, when this masthead used Google to search for Bitcoin Evolution, the first result that came up was not an official notification, but two Bitcoin Evolution scam websites.

Registering a phone number with one of the websites resulted in a near-immediate call from a scammer. Invest just $300 and make daily profits of 10 to 15 per cent, the fraudster promised.

Fleeced of $700,000

Based on a Google search alone, it can be difficult for Australians to tell if potential investment companies are real or a scam. Results are sometimes muddied by the presence of scam platforms, fake reviews and fake news articles or blogs promoting scams.

Fleeced of $700,000

Based on a Google search alone, it can be difficult for Australians to tell if potential investment companies are real or a scam. Results are sometimes muddied by the presence of scam platforms, fake reviews and fake news articles or blogs promoting scams.

Swav, a Melbourne man who didn’t want to use his last name for privacy reasons, was connected to overseas criminals through an advertisement that appeared on his Facebook feed in spring 2020.

Although he didn’t realise it at the time, the celebrities who appeared in the ad providing endorsements were fakes, computer-modified replicas of the famous person.

This masthead revealed on Saturday that Meta, owner of Facebook, takes money for these “celeb-bait” scam ads, despite the ads promoting notorious fraudulent investment platforms and coming from accounts that were clearly not legitimate investment companies.

Swav was just one day into the con, and had only handed over $1500, when he noticed a contradiction in the scammer’s sales pitch. It piqued his suspicion, and when he hung up, he began doing a bit more research.

“I started to search intensively about this company to verify if they are legit,” he recalled. “I searched on Google … but most of the reviews were positive.”

Over the following nine months, the fraudster from a platform called StocksCM stole close to $700,000 from him.

This masthead tested Google results based on searches for 100 entities recently added to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission’s (ASIC) investor alert list.

The list includes the names of known scam platforms and businesses targeting Australian consumers without holding the appropriate licences.

It showed that Google was failing to block websites for even these publicised rorts.

In the first page of results, Google returned 101 links to websites for platforms using the same names as the blacklisted entities.

The search results also featured 10 Google ads directly promoting scam brands named in ASIC’s warning list.

Google was accepting money to run ads for the Immediate Connect, Immediate Edge and Immediate Vortex scam platforms, all on ASIC’s alert list.

Ten out of the top 14 Google results that appeared in a search for “Immediate Connect” were likely scam platforms, including the top four results, which were all sponsored links for the scam…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Simon Smith, a cybersecurity expert with Scam Assist, said many of his clients who had lost their savings were originally connected to scammers by Google ads, including through fraudulent AI auto-trading platforms.

He said the public had high levels of trust in Google, and many assumed that the results served up first would be most relevant to them.

“The fact that you can pay your money to have a scam ad is just, in itself, unbelievable,” he said…………………. more https://www.theage.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/the-101-ways-google-serves-up-australians-to-known-scammers-20241113-p5kqew.html

November 18, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized