David “Kochie” Koch has blasted the government for an urgent response to the drastic rise in online scammers.
Speaking with the Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones on Sunrise, Kochie was fired up when he shared that his identity has been used online to scam people “for years”.
Kochie predicted that Australians have lost over $4 billion to scammers in 2022 so far, with Jones saying that number is probably larger than first estimated.
A furious Kochie responded, “What are you going to do about it? Because look, scammers have been using my photo and dodgy quotes from me to scam people for years.”
“They appear on Facebook, they appear on LinkedIn… and I can do nothing about it.”
Recalling a recent issue with a scammer, Kochie continued, “I had a bloke on the weekend contact me through Facebook, abusing me because he’d lost $30,000 on a scam that used my picture and dodgy comments from me.”
Assistant Treasurer Jones went on to say that the law currently doesn’t allow for punishments of online media when it comes to scams, but the government is pushing to amend such legislation.
He said, “We need to drag the law into the 21st century… Social media platforms need to be accountable for the material they are publishing.”
Kochie said that was “music to his ears”, saying that “not only are people losing thousands of dollars, but it damages my reputation. I seem photo online saying things saying things I never said about bitcoin or whatever, and people lose money because they think it’s me.”
Assistant Treasurer Jones assured Kochie that the government will be cracking down on these “economic criminals at the source”, with Kochie again saying, “It’s just heart-breaking for our viewers who get sucked in by these sorts of things.”
Image credits: Sunrise
This article first appeared on OverSixty.