Overview
- ASIC issued a public warning on Thursday about a recent rise in sophisticated pump-and-dump schemes that recruit victims through social media posts and private messaging groups.
- Scammers impersonate well-known finance figures and institutions by faking logos, images and videos to build trust and push people into buying specific stocks.
- Victims, often people near or in retirement, buy real shares through legitimate broker accounts and suffer big losses when scammers sell and the price collapses.
- Authorities advise checking an Australian Financial Services Licence on ASIC’s register and using ScamWatch to verify offers and report suspicious approaches.
- Regulators point to December convictions of Telegram-based scammers and to 2025 figures showing $2.18 billion lost to scams as evidence that enforcement, platform controls and recovery remain major challenges.