Wattle Investment Recovery

WATTLE SCHEME resurfaces as a recovery room scam - The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has uncovered yet another 'advance fee' scam, operating under the name of the Wattle scheme. The bogus scheme promises people a share in millions of dollars lost years ago in a failed and illegal investment scheme, via an email.

Richard Briggs, an investment lawyer based in the United Kingdom claims in the email to have obtained $64 million belonging to people who had invested in the former Wattle investment scheme that ASIC closed down in 1998.

ASIC executive director of consumer protection Greg Tanzer said that the email had all the hallmarks of a typical advance fee fraud, where promises are made to unsuspecting people in order to extract various fees from them or, worse still, gain access to their bank accounts, and of course, the victims will never receive any money.

This case is a particularly repellent example of how low fraudsters will sink to exploit others. The Wattle scheme was one of Australia's worst investment frauds, involving nearly 3,000 people and funds of some $200 million,' he said.