| Home | Forms | Publications | Requests | Fees and Payments | Contact Us
Cold calling is simply an unexpected phone call - out of the blue - or even an email, offering you some kind of opportunity.
Typical cold calling directed to Australian consumers and businesses has related primarily to supposed outstanding investment opportunities or to placement of the name of a company in an upcoming catalogue or flyer, or to offer a great or free deal of some kind of product often accompanied with a tale about the seller or his company being in dire straights or a friend of the senior manager.
The investments don't exist, the advertising catalogue or flyer is never produced, and the free offer is usually billed at a very high price.
Some cold calling is also an invitation to 'renew' your domain name and is designed to look like an invoice. These usually arrive by mail, but can be emailed, and the domain name is not actually correct - businesses and consumers are usually paying for something they don't really want.
Other examples have involved the cold caller telling consumers that they have won a prize such as a 'free holiday' but it turns out that the only way for them to collect their winnings was to attend a seminar where they were pressured to invest in time share or other property.
Cold calling frauds have cost Australians well over $400 million just in the past seven years.
These frauds are carried out by well-organised criminal gangs, operating in various countries round the world. They go to a lot of trouble to make things seem above board. Their telephone staff sound professional and well-informed. They speak the language of investments and finance.
Their organisation will often have a well-presented website, telephone numbers, addresses and bank accounts and glossy brochures. Some of them even indicate they have references from people with Australian telephone numbers or from overseas regulatory bodies.
Don't be taken in. This is all window-dressing. The staff are extremely experienced confidence tricksters, who know all the right psychological buttons to push. The respectable addresses are usually just serviced offices. The telephone numbers (even Australian ones) are simply transferred, without your knowledge, back to the country where the fraudsters are based. The overseas regulators are just made-up names.
Always ask questions!
For example, if it’s an investment offer ask: 'Do you hold an Australian financial services licence? What's your licence number?' Usually the line will go dead when you ask, sometimes they claim they don't need a licence, and now and again they'll say they've got one. It's completely illegal for anyone to offer you financial advice or a financial product, such as shares, without an Australian licence. You can check licence details as well as a list of known cold calling organisations for free on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's consumer website FIDO or call on 1300 300 630.
Many people have checked this list, and saved themselves a lot of money. But do be careful, names change all the time, so a licence check is your best bet.
Please let ASIC know if you've been cold-called offering an investment. Please let the ACCC or Fair Trading agencies know if you’ve been cold called by other scams. Even if the people or company cannot be prosecuted, warnings about these scams are very useful for other people.
