Harassment charges and extortion are rising in the Shoalhaven region, piggybacking off an overall state increase in online scam crimes.
Data from BOSCAR states that New South Wales has seen an increase by 6.7% in harassment from 2019 – 2023, while extortion cases are at a five-year high of 120.1 per cent in NSW alone.
Shoalhaven retiree, Kathleen Park, has faced many challenges over the years with harassment, leading to extortion and card fraud.
“I’ve had many messages sent to me about random things I apparently owe the government,” Mrs Grace said.
“I often get threatening messages to pay my toll fines even though I can’t drive, and my husband doesn’t go anywhere near somewhere that uses tolls.
“I got a message this morning about my car being used at 3am, they said if I didn’t pay, I would be penalised.”
Many Australians are facing harassment scams via text or email, often stating that they have an outstanding balance to pay. Money is taken from the deposit at an extortive rate, which in turn compromises the user’s financial accounts.
Many scammers are hyperlinking their fraudulent links to be disguised as official sites, tricking people into legitimacy.
“I’ve also had my everyday use credit card taken off me because someone had been charging things to my card that wasn’t me or my family,” Mrs Park said.
“Fraud-squad called me to ask if I knew anything about it because I had random payments come out from the red cross which was becoming more expensive by the month.”
Over 1.92 million Australians made scam reports from 2022 – 2023. Statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics state that there is a wide percentage of age ranges that have been victimised by card fraud.
Many Australian agencies have created sites to help users understand what is real and what is extortion online, in a hope to reduce scam cases.
To learn more about active Australian scams, referring to government sites such as Scamwatch will help with a general understanding on how scams operate and prevent future exploitation.
Feature image source: Linkedin
