 Yes, good morning. My name is Brian Hayham, Detective Superintendent of the Fraud and Corporate Crime Group and it's my opportunity to take the time this morning to discuss some concerns we have from the Queensland Police Service and the State Crime Operations Command regarding the activities of some unscrupulous people, not just here in Brisbane or Queensland or Australia, but in fact around the world and Queensland is going through some very tough times and unfortunately there were parts in our communities, members of our communities and the global community that sees these opportunities to wreak havoc and pray upon the vulnerabilities of our victims to pray upon the generosity of our supportive community members and simply to pray upon any opportunity out of the devastation that our communities have faced and it's important that we get the opportunity to give you the information that you need so that you don't fall victim, your family members don't fall victim and your friends don't fall victim. So we've seen a number of different types of operations at this point in time, but it's only early days. We know from our experiences that the fraud can manifest itself for months afterwards and sometimes if people fall victim now, they carry a legacy that couldn't do in many years. It's not just the immediate loss of money today. Now one area that we know scammers have been operating is door knocking and they will come to your door purporting to offer you a great service at a very reasonable or cheap price conditional upon the fact that you pay in cash. Now golden rule, never pay cash. Never pay in advance. These people will put your cash in their pocket and disappear or they'll do half a job or a shoddy performance and then disappear. So your golden rule is never pay upfront. Make sure you're dealing with licensed people that you can validate their credentials. Make sure you're getting a written receipt or invoice or quote for work, get a second quote if possible and don't pay until the work has been completed and you're satisfied that everything's been resolved in a manner that you're acceptable with and then pay the money and make sure you get a written receipt. Another scam that's being portrayed at the moment telephone scams. We know people are receiving phone calls from entities that purport to represent organisations acting in your interest who for a small fee of two hundred dollars who will then place and fast-track your application for flood relief with the government. These organisations don't exist. No payment will be required. No fast-tracking will take place. And what happens, people can not only lose two hundred dollars, they could lose their identity, their bank account details and the credit card details. If you or you know of someone who was actually surrendered this information to these crooks, it's very important you cancel those accounts and your card details immediately. It's also advisable that you contact a credit rating agency and there are numerous ones out there that can monitor your credit status. So in the event that your identity has been stolen and someone seeks to take out a credit card in your name or a loan facility or any form of financial instrument that they will not approve it. They will put a block and you will be advised and you have that ability to stop that matter proceeding and take steps accordingly. So that's very important. Now we these are not these phone calls we must understand most of them are coming from overseas. They're operating at professional organised call centres and they have vast resources and we can continue to them to occur in certain times. But the golden rule when receiving a phone call is that you never provide personal information, identity information about yourself, your friends or your families, never certainly ever provide financial information and we've seen more and more of these types of schemes operate and I quite frankly will continue to do so. They will escalate because they're very successful. So what we need to do is get a culture that we never provide personal financial information out to anyone that calls us. Get their phone number, get their name, get the name of the organisation they purport to represent and if you have a computer handy do a quick Google check. Just check those details and see what you come up with and that few seconds of preparation may be the difference between you losing your identity or being safe. It's very important you do that and be very wary these days of surveys. I expect that we will see surveys targeting our victims for what was lost. Who was your insurance company? What bank did you operate with? Things that you're not given out that what do you think is personal information but you're actually revealing a good deal of content about yourself and your family and what you've been through and guess what? In six to eight weeks time you could get a phone call that starts to tell you about yourself because they represent a government agency or they represent a banking institution and they're validating this information back to you and in your mind you believe they are who they say they are because how else could they get their information? Not thinking the fact that six weeks ago you provided all that to them. Inocuous as it seems as a time so we need to be very careful about what information we give out on the telephone. Now for those who have computers we know and we can expect and I say this with a significant degree of confidence we will see spam emails or emails that come out and they'll purport to be from charities there to support the flood appeal. Please don't respond. If you want to give money for it to a charity and we urge you to do so consider the Premier's flood relief appeal. It's well documented. It's out there. You know then that your money will get into the pockets of those who need them. Now the other type of email that we're going to see are those emails and they may be from your friends who want to share some uh some insights and at this time we have a great thirst for knowledge and curiosity and it's just human nature and the crooks know this and they prey upon it so they throw it into the internet ether photographs of the floods. Now quite frankly that it's not photographs they've taken themselves they've photographed stolen from legitimate news sources that have been posted online around the world and they'll share these photographs with you and you think that's rather innocuous however as soon as you open that photograph you will infect your computer with a device such as a keylogger. Now what a keylogger does it actually records all your key strikes from that point on so the next time you do your internet banking you apply for something online you use your credit card to make a purchase the keylogger is recording all of those strikes and they will capture your internet banking details your password your residential address your postal address your home phone number your mobile phone number and your credit card details you've just unfortunately surrendered all of that information to the criminals so never open a photograph or download a file or click on a link unless it's from a trusted source and under these circumstances I think we need to take one step more in the precaution factor and it'll be a little bit more cynical and if a friend sends you a photograph of the floods ask them where did you get it and if they didn't take it themselves well they don't know the person who did take it do yourself a favor and don't open it because the risk is not worth it so we will see those emails and the best advice that I could give you is simply delete it now we'll also know that we will see the distribution of photographs and videos through social networking mediums again big cautious and beyond the defense there was a lot of nonsense going on in those sorts of platforms information is being shared through these devices that are infected and are designed specifically to infect you the other thing we will continue to see is the development of websites now by way of example I have it on good authority that during the Christchurch earthquake it was six hours before the first website appeared that was that was dodgy it was a fake it was designed to illicit information from people and extract money six hours now I dare say and I must say I don't know personally yet of any website that has appeared but of course at this stage they are targeting people in other parts of the world so we will probably be the last to find out about these web pages I know that they will appear and I know they are put up by the crooks and they are to illicit harm from not only members of the Queensland and Australian communities but other people who wish to show good will all around the world and that's possibly a good warning in the future if you wish to support another world event such as recently Brazil the flooding there and hundreds killed be careful about who you deal with don't take the internet at face value it has a lot of good it also contains a lot of miscreant and a quantity of bad that we need to avoid and protect ourselves and our families so stay safe online always use good antivirus always manage your email if you get an email from someone you don't know or trust delete it if there's any email from a bank delete it if it's an email from a charity looking for donations delete it if it's an email offering employment investment opportunities delete it don't let temptation get the better of you that could put you and your financial well-being at risk if there is anything you're concerned about please give us a call at the fraud and corporate crime group double three six four double six double two it's better that we take the time to allow your concerns and stop you falling victim we also have information the qps website about scams and you can even report scams online by going to the recoupier's home page we i will expect that these scams and these international predators will continue to focus upon the victims and the community support for this event for many months to come they will actually monitor on a not an hour by hour basis but a minute by minute basis of the developments because one of the ways they can entrap people so well and so cleverly is to use up-to-date information so they scour the internet to put together a collage and 99 percent of their story is based upon fact and that's what convinces a lot of people that they're creditable and as each new step unfolds they will use that information to validate their story and it will continue for some time so we will see second and third and fourth waves of these predatory behaviors so we need