Australia Warns of SMS Scams Posing as Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Australian police have warned against sophisticated SMS scams posing as cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which was trying to get victims to transfer crypto assets to the scammers.

The Australian Federal Police said the fraudsters are using sender ID spoofing to make the fraudulent message appear in the same conversation thread as a message from Binance.

Victims are told by the fraudulent message that there is a security breach in their account and are urged to transfer money to a “trusted wallet” controlled by the fraudster.

Police identified more than 130 potential victims and alerted them. Once a victim's money is in a scammer's wallet, it will be quickly transferred to multiple other accounts, making it difficult to recover the money, cybercrime officials said.

Similar scams posing as other well-known cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Coinbase and Gemini, are also using pre-generated text messages to try to control people's e-wallets.

The Australian government is taking steps to combat these scams, with plans to introduce an SMS Sender ID Register by late 2025 that will require telecommunication firms to verify brand name information and reduce the risk of fraud.