Australians lost a record amount of more than $3.1bn to scams in 2022, up from the $2bn lost in 2021, a new report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has revealed.
The Targeting Scams report, which compiles data from Scamwatch, ReportCyber, major banks and money remitters, was based on an analysis of more than 500,000 reports.
It shows that investment scams caused the most financial loss, with combined losses of $1.5bn. This was followed by remote access scams with $229m lost, and payment redirection scams with $224m lost.
As scams became more sophisticated the money lost has increased, with the average reported losses on Scamwatch hitting $19,654, up 54% from $12,742 in 2021.
The real amount lost was likely to be far higher than the $3.1bn, as 30% of victims do not report scams to anyone and only 13% of victims report to Scamwatch, the report said.
“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,” said the ACCC deputy chair, Catriona Lowe.
“As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
Scamwatch received 239,237 scam reports last year, a 16.5% drop in the number of reports received in 2021. But the financial losses totalled more than $569m, a 76% increase compared to losses reported in the previous year.
This is due, in part, to scammers using new technology to lure and deceive victims, the report said.
“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.”
Older Australians continue to lose more money than other age groups. People aged 65 and over made the most reports (49,163) and lost more money than any other age group with $120.7 m reported lost, an increase of 47.4%.
People aged 35 to 44 reported the highest increase in reported losses up 90.7% to $91.2m.
People from culturally and linguistically diverse communities were significantly over-represented in terms of financial losses across a range of scam types, accounting for more than one-quarter (27.9%) of total losses associated with identity theft and about a third (32.7%) of all losses to pyramid schemes, the report said.
Millions of Australians became more vulnerable to scams in 2022, following a spate of large-scale, high-profile data breaches late last year, Lowe said.
“Scammers are the most opportunistic of all criminals. Unfortunately, the more information a scammer has about you, the more convincing they can be,” she said.
“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.”
