Fraud is still on the rise, but with the ongoing number of fake texts, mysterious phone calls and suspicious emails, Griffith has seemingly gotten wise to the tricks being used.
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A recent consumer survey from NSW Crime Stoppers showed that almost 90 per cent of Australians are receiving at least one nuisance call every week and a further 10 per cent are receiving more than ten nuisance or unwanted calls each week.
While fraudsters can employ a number of tactics to glean information or money from unwitting targets, Inspector Kim Traynor said that cases of reported fraud have dropped notably from their highs earlier in the year.
"Over the last three months, we've been trending quite well for reported fraud. That's across a broad range, that can include people not paying for fuel as well as other incidents."
Inspector Traynor added that Griffith had seen a rise in March and June where fraud was reported widely, and that while reported cases of successful fraud had dropped, fraud attempts might not have.
"June was probably our worst month, June and March were our worst. I know it's been reported widely and I was getting all those SMS messages too. I know someone here last week was getting the international phone calls, someone had eight calls in a day," Inspector Traynor said.
"A lot aren't reported because they're attempted but aren't successful, they're just deleted."
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She added that while reported frauds had dropped, there was a chance that it was still high but people were not reporting it.
"There's a degree of people who are embarrassed to report to the police. The number of frauds reported have been down but we can't say for sure ... There's people, if they fall for it, they just give it up and don't report because it's embarrassing to admit."
NSW Crime Stoppers recently launched a campaign to promote 'just hanging up' when receiving scam calls.
CEO of NSW Crime Stoppers, Mr Peter Price AM said, "The questions may seem harmless, but they build a picture of you, where your finances are, your financial situation and other personal details that allow them to impersonate you and extract money".
"Hanging up may be the difference between being scammed or not."
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