New report reveals wins and losses.

 

The National Anti-Scam Centre’s collaborative efforts across government, law enforcement, consumer organisations and industry have boosted the community’s fight against financial crime, as the latest Targeting Scams report reveals a 13.1 per cent decline in reported losses to $2.74 billion in 2023.

 

The report compiles data reported to Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX), IDCARE and ASIC.

 

It shows that Australians made over 601,000 scam reports to these organisations in 2023, an 18.5 per cent increase on 2022. In terms of financial losses, investment scams continued to cause the most harm ($1.3 billion), followed by remote access scams ($256 million) and romance scams ($201.1 million). 

 

The Targeting Scams report shows some concerning emerging scam trends, despite the overall decrease in losses reported. There were increases in reports of financial losses to phishing scams, payment redirection scams and job scams.

 

Australians are being urged to check payment details directly with a business before paying an emailed invoice, following a rise in losses to payment redirection scams.

 

Last year, Australians reported losing $16.2 million to payment redirection scams. Despite the total number of reports to Scamwatch decreasing by 28 per cent, the total amount lost increased by three per cent, indicating that Australians lost significantly more money per scam last year compared to 2022.

 

“Scammers are sophisticated criminals and are becoming more targeted in how they exploit Australian consumers and businesses,” ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said.

 

“These criminals are posing as genuine businesses that a consumer has recently dealt with, sending fake invoices with altered payment details so that the money ends up with the scammer.”

 

“This scam is hard to detect because the scammer will either hack into the email system of the business or impersonate the business’ email address by changing as little as one letter,” Lowe said.