Australian Tax Office probed 150 staff over social media refund scam

An audit revealed a large online GST refund fraud campaign that used social-media ads to instruct people to create fake businesses and lodge fraudulent ABN/GST refund claims; between April 2022 and June 2023 the scheme generated A$2 billion in suspect claims and involved about 57,000 participants. The ATO launched Operation Protego, investigated 150 employees (with about a dozen prosecuted), recovered A$123 million and prevented an additional A$2.7 billion in suspect refunds, while the audit criticized the ATO's dispersed fraud controls and rated parts of its detection framework only partly effective.