Cyber crime earnings of $4.5tr represent ‘third biggest’ global economy

Andrew Irvine described scams as the “scourge” of our times, as he described how NAB is attempting to counter cybercrime.

National Australia Bank chief Andrew Irvine says scams are the “scourge of our times” and the institution he leads is disrupting some transactions to safeguard their customers.

Mr Irvine made the remarks on Wednesday at the Australian Banking Association conference, which also heard annual earnings from organised cybercrime is worth up to $4.5 trillion per year, making it the world’s third biggest economy according to Interpol.

NAB are “adding more friction” into their payment processes, Mr Irvine said.

“If we’re seeing someone sending a payment somewhere they’ve never sent it before, we’re basically asking ‘are you sure?’

“In the past, the goal was always to make payments as easy and as quick as possible. Now we’re trying to put in a bit more friction,” he said.

“I think this (scams and fraud) is the scourge of our times. It’s an absolute plague. And unfortunately, I do feel that criminals are going to get more sophisticated. And the advent of capabilities like AI and generational AI are going to increase the threat vectors and the sophistication of the attacks.

“So we’re going to have to continue to work really, really hard as an industry and I think we’re going to have to work really, really hard on educating Australians at the same time.”

Mr Irvine also said Australia is “one of the few economies in the world today where fraud losses are falling”.

Human rights agency International Justice Mission Australia CEO David Braga told the conference cryptocurrency is “critical” to scam operations.

“There’s the classic romance scam, but also the (get)-rich quick cryptocurrency scam. In each example, the goal is to have your currency (be it) Aussie dollars, whatever, converted into crypto and then it gets transferred around and eventually pulled back out from that system, which obviously is a significant challenge for everyone in this room,” he said.

“When your customer turns up, they think they want to make this payment. They’ve been convinced this is in their best interest. So the social engineering of this is devastating.”

Earlier, Mr Braga said many scammers who target Australia originate from South-East Asia and are often forced into the illegal market because they are victims of human trafficking.

He said during the pandemic scam operations were set up in empty casinos. Since then, the operations have surged.

“They’re then forced to work for 12 to 20 hours a day, generally for six days a week. If the scam workers don’t make meet their specified target, or try to escape, they’re starved, electrocuted, or beaten,” he said.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission executive Heidi Snell said it was “not surprising” cash made from a range of schemes, stemming from social media, emails, texts and phone calls account for one of the biggest global economies after there were $3.2bn worth of reported losses in Australia in 2022 alone.

And, despite a drop in losses of about 13 per cent last year, head of the ACCC’s National Anti-Scam Centre Ms Snell said there are “still a lot of everyday Australians losing near-life savings or all that they can afford at any given time”.

“We need to create an environment where victims are not embarrassed or ashamed to report or tell that story,” she said.

Ms Snell said the ACCC is working with a time-limited task force which brings experts together, including from banks and law enforcement to focus on and try to disrupt a particular scam type. Last year, the taskforce concentrated on investment scams.

Originally published as Cyber crime earnings of $4.5tr represent ‘third biggest’ global economy