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Don't be fooled! Sunrise star issues urgent warning exposing new email hoax
As much as we love living in the digital age, some serious disadvantages come with it – especially when it comes to all the various scams going around. It seems like every day, there’s a new report of someone being scammed out of their life savings or falling victim to identity theft, and it’s getting harder and harder to stay safe online.
Sadly, even celebrities aren’t immune to these despicable schemes, as Sunrise star David ‘Kochie’ Koch recently found out.
Kochie urgently issued a warning to Aussie viewers recently after he received a fake email about him and The Morning Show host, Larry Emdur.
The beloved Sunrise star shared an image of the email in question on his Instagram account. The email was titled ‘Breaking News: David James Koch reveals how to profit from the crisis’, and included a link where people can watch the ‘watch the exclusive interview’.
The email in question. Credit: kochie_online on Instagram
The email also claimed that ‘tensions mounted on The Morning Show’ as Kochie got into a ‘verbal spat’ with the show host, Larry, over a ‘method of capitalising on stock market instability’.
In the poorly worded email, it claimed that Kochie asked Larry to pull out his phone and launch an app where people can place stock market trades. It also alleged that ‘within a few minutes, Larry’s account was in profit’ which is, of course, a lie.
Kochie, who runs a personal finance course called Kochie’s Money Makeover, immediately warned viewers that the email is a scam.
Larry and Kochie discuss the email scam. Credit: 7news
‘Scam warning: If this is hitting your inbox, beware. It is a scam,’ Kochie captioned in his Instagram post. He also said that he has referred the email to the ACCC.
Allegedly, the scammers might have been attempting to capitalise on the success of Sunrise, since the show has a wide reach – over 980,000 Australians purportedly watch the show regularly.
Last year, Aussies reportedly lost more than $2 billion to scams – despite government, law enforcement, and the private sector’s efforts to lessen scam activity.
According to Scamwatch, these phishing scams can trick people into giving out personal information, such as bank account numbers, credit cards, and passwords.
Emails that contain typos or grammatical mistakes (especially American spelling as is the case in this scam) are a tell-tale sign that the email you’ve received is a scam.
You can browse through our Scam Watch forum to check how you can avoid similar scams.
