About AUSTRAC
The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) is Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulator and financial intelligence service. It ensures that businesses are compliant with their reporting and risk management obligations and analyses, and also provides law enforcement authorities and national security partners with information to assist them in their investigations and operations.
Crypto taskforce
In light of the increased number of crypto ATMs (CATMs) and CATM-related crimes in Australia, AUSTRAC created an internal crypto taskforce in September 2024 aimed at tackling terrorism financing and money laundering risks associated with CATMs and ensuring that digital currency exchanges (DCEs) that provide CATM services “adhere to minimum standards and implement robust controls to detect and mitigate the risks of their machines being exploited for money laundering, scams, fraud, or other proceeds of crime”, as explained by AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas in his CEO Review in AUSTRAC’s 2024-25 Annual Report.
Since its inception, the internal taskforce has actively monitored high risk DCEs and has had several notable successes, including disrupting the operation of three DCEs and participating in a joint law enforcement operation that identified scams targeting older Australians and 90 victims of crime that also included money mules (someone who has been instructed by a third party to move or transfer illicit funds).
Types of crypto scams
The adoption of numerous digital currencies and platforms by Australians has created new opportunities for criminals and criminal organisations to skirt detection by law enforcement agencies. As stated in the financial crime guide Preventing the Criminal Abuse of Digital Currencies published by the Fintel Alliance in 2022, the “pseudo-anonymous and borderless nature of digital currencies presents a risk for the facilitation of serious crimes”.
The types of crimes identified by the guide include the following:
- Money laundering
- Selling or purchasing illicit products on darknet market places
- Financing of terrorism
- Scams
- Tax evasion
- Ransomware
Partners and affiliates
AUSTRAC’s crypto taskforce does not operate in a vacuum. It regularly works with other agencies in Australia that provide data that assists the taskforce in its investigations and goals. For example, the National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC), as reported in the 2025 Targeting Scams report, supplied data concerning 1,548 tainted cryptocurrency wallet addresses that year to its industry partners and law enforcement agencies through the Fintel Alliance, which resulted in those wallets subsequently being blocked and blacklisted.
The NASC also works with other agencies, such as the Australian Security and Investments Commission (ASIC) to combat cryptocurrency investment scams, and that collaboration resulted in the removal of 11,964 phishing and investment scam websites in 2025.
Crypto scam harm
Another partner that works with the taskforce is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which publishes a quarterly snapshot that provides data on various scams identified across Australia, including ones involving crypto currencies and platforms.
As observed in the most recent update published in June 2026, data from Scamwatch revealed that investment scams (which include crypto scams) had the highest reported losses in the first three months of 2026, with Australians “reporting losses of $45.5 million”. In addition to these losses, AUSTRAC also estimated that 85% of Australia’s top CATM users had either been a party to money mule activity or had been compelled to carry out transactions at CATMs by scammers.
Outcomes and new compliance requirements
As a result of the taskforce’s efforts and its findings over the course of its first year of operation, AUSTRAC introduced new compliance requirements for CATM providers:
- Cash deposits and withdrawals are limited to $5,000
- Enhanced customer due diligence requirements
- Mandatory scam warnings
- Requirements for more thorough transaction monitoring
How to help combat crypto-related crime
There are several steps that reporting entities can take to help prevent crypto-related crimes, including:
- Remaining familiar with AUSTRAC’s indicators of suspicious activity for virtual asset service providers, which provides a list of indicators that are divided into several categories:
- Customer identification and behaviours
- Indicators specific to cryptocurrency ATM misuse
- Money laundering
- Cyber and digital
- Serious financial and organised crime
- Terrorism, national security and international crime
- Proliferation financing indicators
- Suspicious matter reporting
- Ensure suspicious matter reports (SMRs) are lodged with AUSTRAC when there is a reasonable suspicion that a person or transaction may be linked to a crime
- Review and ensure that all AML/CTF obligations are being met by reporting entities
- Review and become familiar with AUSTRAC’s financial crime guide, Preventing the Criminal Abuse of Digital Currencies
Key takeaways
Since its establishment in 2024, AUSTRAC’s internal crypto taskforce has played an important role in protecting Australians from a variety of crypto-related scams. To continue succeeding in its mission, AUSTRAC reminds reporting entities that they must lodge suspicious matter reports if they suspect a person or transaction is linked to crime. Doing so is not only an important part of their AML/CTF obligations, but also vital to protecting Australia from money laundering, terrorism financing, and organised crime.
