Report reveals Australians lost $2.7bn to scams last year

A new report has revealed Australians lost a whopping $2.7bn to scams last year, with one group the biggest victims.

Australians lost $2.7bn to scams last year, with 601,000 cons reported to authorities, according to a new report from the Australian Anti Scam Centre.

While the amount of losses still amounted to billions of dollars, the sum was down 13.1 per cent from the previous year, but the number of scams reported to authorities went up 18.5 per cent.

Investment scams continued to cause the most harm, with Australians reporting they lost $1.3bn, followed by remote access scams ($256m) and romance scams ($201.1m).

People over the age of 65 were the only age group to experience an increase in reported losses and were disproportionably impacted by investment scams.

Losses for people over the age of 65 increased by 13.3 per cent last year to $120m.

Many also reported significant losses to scams resulting from contact initiated on social media.

Australian billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has been the victim of scam ads published on Meta’s platforms. Picture: Supplied

Text messages were the most reported contact method, with 109,621 reports (37.3 per cent increase from 2022).

However, scam calls resulted in the highest reported losses at $116m.

Scams that occurred via contact through social media resulted in the second highest reported losses, increasing by 16.5 per cent to $93.5m.

People from culturally and linguistically diverse communities were disproportionably impacted by job scams as were people looking for part-time work or seeking to supplement their income and ease cost of living pressures.

Responding to the fresh data, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said the government was determined to make further inroads in preventing the criminal activity.

“While the report shows positive early signs, scam losses remain far too high and we urge Australians to remain alert to the threat of scammers and report any suspicious activity,” he said.

ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said it was encouraging to see the flow of funds to scammers disrupted.

ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe also agreed it was encouraging to see signs that co-ordinated scam prevention, detection and disruption initiatives could stem the flow of funds to criminals and protect consumers.

“We are optimistic that our combined efforts will continue to reduce scam losses,” she said.

“We will continue this important work because losses remain too high and behind the numbers are real people who have lost money, often every last cent, to scams.”

Ms Lowe said a Scams Code Framework with strong, mandatory and enforceable obligations on banks, telcos and digital platforms would prevent weak links for scammers to exploit.

“Good data and intel sharing is also key and we will be adding to the number of parties sending data into the National Anti-Scams Centre having made good progress on sending data out,” she said.

Originally published as Report reveals Australians lost $2.7bn to scams last year