HOW COPS BUSTED BOILER ROOM SCAM

Boiler room scam busted because con artist unwittingly rang top fraud cop

Jessica Huxley reveals the full inside story

IT was like any other phone call.

The scammer picks a number, cold calls from a private line and delivers a spiel about the stock trading scheme software, costing a cool $20,000.

Except this time he has called a cop – a Brisbane-based fraud and cyber crime detective. The cop plays along, acts interested, sets up a meeting with the “Sydney salesman” who meets him at a Brisbane hotel to showcase the software.

Police then track the con artist back to Brisbane Airport but instead of flying to NSW he drives back to his Gold Coast home.

The investigation into the alleged Gold Coast fraudster gains traction and one week later he sits charged with attempted fraud in the Southport watchhouse. The Fraud and Cyber Crime Group officers on Wednesday raided the Gold Coast business, the boiler room from where the alleged criminal organisation would cold call about the share trading investment scams, arresting the 49-year-old man who allegedly tried to sell the fraudulent investment opportunity to a police investigator and seizing $80,000 from company bank accounts. He will appear in Southport Magistrates Court next month.

Speaking exclusively with the Gold Coast Bulletin, Detective Senior Constable Raymond Burdis ( pictured), the officer who answered the cold call, has told of how his quick thinking helped bring down the alleged mastermind behind the company.

“The Gold Coast is the epicentre for fraud in Australia,” Sen-Constable Burdis said.

“The reason they don’t say they’re from the Coast is because then people think, ‘They’re dodgy’ so they usually either say they’re from Sydney or Brisbane.

“They tried to sell me the ‘end-of-day-trading’ computer program for $20,000 and at the end of trading every day it downloads all the data from the stock exchange and gives you a list of all the top 1000 companies in Australia on the exchange.

“People get sucked in but none of these actually work.”

Sen-Constable Burdis said it usually took months before victims went to police, so to make multiple arrests a week on was a huge success.

The company headquarters was one of four Gold Coast addresses raided this week with police also busting a sports betting company in a raid on a Broadbeach Waters mansion and arresting and charging a 53-year-old and 22-year-old father-son partnership accused of multiple fraud offences.

They tried to sell me the ‘end of day trading’ computer program for $20,000 DETECTIVE SENIOR CONSTABLE RAYMOND BURDIS