Australians lost a record $3.1 billion to scams in 2022, an 80 per cent increase from the prior year, with the spike driven by major cyber incidents from Medibank and Optus.
This is according to the ACCC’s new Targeting Scams report, which compiles data reported to the ACCC’s Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, IDCARE, and other government agencies.
Of the various scams, investment scams by far accounted for the highest losses, with $1.5 billion being tricked out of Australians last year alone.
This was followed by remote access scams ($229 million) and payment redirection scams ($224 million).
“Australians lost more money to scams than ever before in 2022, but the true cost of scams is much more than a dollar figure as they also cause emotional distress to victims, their families and businesses,” ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said.
“As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a co-ordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
Scamwatch, the ACCC’s own branch, received 239,237 scam reports last year, a 16.5 per cent drop on the number of reports received in 2021.
Despite the drop in reports, financial losses reported losses experienced by each victim rose by more than 50 per cent, to an average of almost $20,000, while the total amount hit $569 million – a 76 per cent increase on 2021.
The ACCC puts this down to the new technology used in scams..
“Scammers evolve quickly and unfortunately, many Australians are losing their life savings,” Lowe said.
“We have seen alarming new tactics emerge which make scams incredibly difficult to detect. This includes everything from impersonating official phone numbers, email addresses and websites of legitimate organisations to scam texts that appear in the same conversation thread as genuine messages. This means now more than ever, anyone can fall victim to a scam.”
“There has been an explosion of reported losses to phishing scams in the past year, such as “Hi Mum” and Toll/Linkt text scams, which skyrocketed by 469 per cent to $24.6 million in 2022.”
Data breaches from Medibank and Optus lead to a late spike in the year.
“In the weeks after the data breaches, there were hundreds of reports to Scamwatch, including reports of scammers impersonating government departments and businesses to carry out identity theft and remote access scams,” Lowe said.
“While this brought about unprecedented collaboration across government, law enforcement and industry to share information and disrupt scams, there is still more work to be done.
“Unfortunately, there are still significant gaps between and within the key sectors – banks, telcos and digital platforms; and between regulators that scammers exploit to steal money from customers. So we would like to see initiatives that apply across the sectors, knowing that scammers will target the weakest link.”
The Albanese Government will be establishing the National Anti-Scam Centre, which Lowe says will have the “ultimate aim of making Australia the hardest target for scammers.”
