Criminals in Australia are posing as law enforcement officers and using fake cybercrime reports to trick people into believing their personal data has been compromised.
The hacker then forces the victim to transfer their cryptocurrency to a wallet controlled by the scammer, draining their funds.
Scammers exploit fake police reports
Australian authorities have issued a warning after discovering a scam in which cybercriminals impersonate federal police officers to steal cryptocurrency.
The AFP-led cybercrime coordination centre has uncovered a series of schemes in which fraudsters obtain personal information and use it to file fake cybercrime reports through the government's ReportCyber portal.
The scammer then calls the victim and claims that their data was involved in a cryptocurrency breach. The scammer provides a legitimate-looking reference number and directs the victim to check online. The report appears in the system, making the call seem credible.
A second caller, posing as someone from the victim's cryptocurrency platform, encourages them to transfer their assets to a supposedly secure Cold Storage .
Officials stressed that law enforcement officers would never actually request access to cryptocurrency accounts, seed clusters, or banking information .
The case highlights a growing problem, as scammers increasingly use social manipulation techniques and fake phone numbers to trick victims.
The threat from social engineering continues to grow
The Australian scam comes amid a global rise in social engineering targeting cryptocurrency holders.
In August 2025, a victim lost $91 million worth of Bitcoin after scammers posed as support staff from Coinbase and other major cryptocurrency services, marking one of the largest thefts of its kind.
Earlier in the UK , a scammer claiming to be a senior police officer duped another victim, who lost $2.8 million in Bitcoin through a fake Cold Storage website.
In May, a global phishing scam network impersonating Coinbase stole more than $20 million by redirecting users to fake support pages.
Taken together, these cases demonstrate the growing scale and sophistication of social engineering attacks in the cryptocurrency space.
