CANBERRA, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- Australians have been scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of digital gift cards, the country's consumer watchdog has found.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found that 1,236 Australians have lost a total of 434,000 U.S. dollars, or 351 U.S. dollars each, in the form of gift card payments to scammers in calendar year 2017.
The ACCC said the scammers are targeting the elderly and typically seek payment in the form of iTunes gift cards.
The figure represents significant growth in losses to gift card scams after losses in the financial year ended in June 2016 were 385,000 U.S. dollars.
"Scammers are increasingly getting their victims to pay with iTunes gift cards as they can quickly on-sell them and pocket the money," Delia Richard, Deputy Chair of the ACCC, said in a media release on Monday.
"If someone asks you to pay for anything using an iTunes gift card, it is a scam. There are never any circumstances where a legitimate business or government department will ask for payment this way.
"If you pay for a scammer's con with iTunes gift cards, it's nearly impossible to get your money back. Don't ever believe the scammer's lies, no matter how convincing they sound."
The ACCC estimated that the reported cases of alleged fraud only accounted for between five and 10 percent of all cases.
iTunes gift cards are preferred by scammers because they are hard to trace and can be used anywhere in the world to purchase Apple products.
Cases reported to the ACCC's Scamwatch included pensioners who were scammed out of as much as 642 U.S. dollars in gift cards after receiving calls from scammers who claimed to be from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
