Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock sits down across the studio from ABC finance presenter Alan Kohler.
According to a now-removed article that appeared online, the interview gets increasingly heated, until, astonishingly, Bullock storms out. She doesn’t like Kohler’s questions about a system called Boulder Sparhaven, “an algorithm that automatically exploits market functions”.
But Boulder Sparhaven, a cryptocurrency trading platform, is not licensed to provide financial services in Australia, and the federal government’s Moneysmart website urges people to “be wary” of dealing with it. And that fiery interview between Kohler and Bullock never happened.
It’s a kind of scam that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission says is on the rise.
New research released by the corporate regulator today shows that schemes using deepfake pictures or videos of celebrities and politicians are getting more prevalent and sophisticated, thanks to the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
“The presence of polished content, familiar branding or convincing testimonials does not mean an investment is legitimate,” ASIC chair Sarah Court said.
“AI is making investment scams more convincing and harder to detect. A simple online search is not enough to verify whether an opportunity is legitimate”.
Last year, the regulator took down 19,400 scams, an increase of 182 per cent. In particular, there was a 279 per cent jump in the watchdog’s take-downs of phishing scams, of which ASIC removed 5476. ASIC also removed 7051 fake investment platforms, a 151 per cent increase.
Kohler, who has previously written about being at the centre of a similar scam involving a fake AI-generated video confrontation with Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn, is one of the most commonly impersonated well-known Australians, according to ASIC’s research.
Top of that list is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is joined by other politicians including Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and independent senator Jacqui Lambie.
The list also features prominent financial pundits including NABtrade head of market insights Tom Piotrowski, one of the bank’s former chief economists, Alan Oster, and Stephen Koukoulas.
Businessman Dick Smith is also commonly impersonated, as is Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart.
The billionaire mining magnate’s Hancock Prospecting has repeatedly released statements
“This is a scam designed to use Mrs Rinehart’s positive corporate image to lure people in to investing,” the company said in response to one of these fake endorsements.
Also featured on ASIC’s list is radio veteran John Laws, who died late last year.
The corporate watchdog says that rather than a single fake image or video, scammers are attempting to create a web of deception by building fake brands, using words and phrases to build an online footprint of news articles, positive reviews, websites and advertisements that work to lure in consumers.
Sometimes, potential investors will be served an ad on a well-known online platform, which takes them to a fake news article containing fabricated quotes from a celebrity or another trusted personality.
Once a consumer provides their details, scammers will follow up with scripted phone calls, inducements to use fake investment platforms, and sometimes even small payments to help build trust.
The growth and increasing sophistication of these online scams has prompted ASIC to step up its enforcement efforts. It is telling consumers about risky investment sites that use famous faces to promote returns that look too good to be true.
Court says prospective investors should verify websites and check whether a website or a company are legitimate.
“Always look for an Australian Financial Services licence number and independently verify that number through ASIC’s free public registers. If a business cannot provide verifiable licence details, or if the information does not match ASIC’s records, do not invest,” Court said.
Kohler said that just telling consumers to be careful wasn’t enough.
“There should be heavy fines for the platforms that carry this stuff and the AI models that make it,” he said.
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Kishor Napier-Raman is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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