Record high number of West Aussies fall victim to Facebook scams

Fake giveaways, phoney job offers, shonky cryptocurrency schemes and bogus shopping ads were among the record number of Facebook scams being flogged to unknowing West Aussies this year.

The social media platform emerged as the number one channel by which hapless victims were being targeted by scammers, according to the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety’s annual report tabled in State Parliament this week.

In a record year for cyber crime in WA, Facebook scams were up 15.7 per cent for the 2023-4 year.

Its Marketplace function scammed 373 users out of more than $513,000 alone, while the report found that classified sites and online marketplaces more broadly accounted for the highest number of victims across all scam types.

Fake product and rental listings were the number one area of trickery for victims, while it was investment scams that racked up the most amount of money lost.

The department also discovered a distinct type of con in December, uncovering four instances where scammers falsely claimed ownership of vacant land before enlisting real estate and settlement agents to help sell the property.

Last month Facebook owner Meta was accused of refusing to deal with the growing number of scam posts after major bank Westpac discovered 360 scams in less than 12 months, with some customers swindled out of tens of thousands of dollars.

The bank’s customer and corporate services group executive Carolyn McCann urged Meta to review how the platform was being used after seeing “every single day the increasing impact this scourge is having on customers and the community”.

Earlier in the year, the consumer watchdog also found that more than half of the cryptocurrency ads on Facebook were scams or violated Meta’s advertising policies.

The overall increase in scams has seen at least $34m wiped from West Aussies’ bank balances in the past year.