WA farmers urged to be vigilant as online scams soar

Farmers are being urged to remain vigilant against cybercrime, with the latest figures revealing WA agribusinesses have lost more than $336,000 to fake machinery scams in 2021.

A WA ScamNet spokeswoman said the State Government watchdog had received 33 consumer complaints about farming machinery scams, with 17 consumers reporting total losses of $336,400.

It comes as cybercrime rates soar across Australia, with consumers and businesses losing $248.4 million to online scams so far in 2021 — a 40 per cent increase compared with the same time last year.

The worst offender in the WA agriculture sector was KY Machinery, a bogus tractor sales website that ripped off two unlucky farmers to the tune of $62,400 according to WA ScamNet.

Consumer Protection Commissioner Gary Newcombe said it was easy to be fooled because scam websites often looked “very professional”, and had even been known to steal the identity of a well-known retailer or brand.

“The items for sale may be offered at very low prices, which triggers a potential buyer’s excitement to bag a bargain,” he said.

“One important tip is to look at the overall quality of the website, grammatical errors in text, poorly edited images and whether they provide an actual physical address for their location.”

Mr Newcombe said the best warning sign that a retail website was a scam was the method of payment.

“Be very suspicious if scammers ask you to pay via electronic funds transfer or using other forms of payment, such as cryptocurrency,” he said.

“It is very difficult to be able to recover money that is paid this way.

“The best insurance against being scammed is to only pay by credit card or a secure payment method such as PayPal where possible, as there is an opportunity to get your money back if something goes wrong or the item is not supplied.”

With Christmas approaching and farmers still in the midst of a record harvest, National Australia Bank warned small farming operations and agribusiness service providers were particularly vulnerable to scams.

NAB group investigations and fraud executive Chris Sheehan said scammers were attracted to the high volumes of invoice-based transactions carried out in the lead-up to the end of the calendar year and during peak on-farm activity such as harvest.

“Farming businesses often hold data and intellectual property that’s very attractive to cyber criminals; for example, data they may have gathered as part of their precision agriculture or smart farming processes,” he said.

“This time of year is particularly busy for invoice processing, with many businesses receiving and paying invoices from third parties and contractors throughout harvest and fruit picking seasons.

“The threat of email scams is growing and some of the most financially damaging of these involve invoices between businesses, suppliers or individuals being intercepted and amended with fraudulent banking details.

“As farming businesses more often deal electronically with their suppliers and customers along the supply chain, masses of business data is being created that can be potentially leveraged by criminals for profit.”

Mr Sheehan said one of the most common invoice scams involved a business or individual receiving an emailed invoice from a supplier whose email account had been hacked by a criminal, enabling them to update payment details on the invoice to direct funds to an account they controlled.

“Fraudulent invoices will often look legitimate and the recipient may not question the payment details and just send funds straight to the criminally controlled account,” he said.

“Another variation we see is when a business receives a request from a supplier to cancel a recent payment, or update bank details on file, and then resend payment to a fraudulent account.”

Mr Sheehan said there were some easy steps agribusinesses could take to protect themselves online.

“The most important thing to do is to verbally confirm any changes to payment details or requests for payments to a new bank account,” he said.

“Call the supplier or customer on a known phone number or look up the number on their website. Don’t rely on the phone number or email on the invoice as it may have been altered.

“This 30-second phone call is a simple but very powerful tool.

“Other important protections include regular backing up of data to a secure location and ensuring you have multi-factor authentication turned on for all possible accounts.”

Visit scamnet.wa.gov.au for an up-to-date list of known fake farming machinery websites.