During Scams Awareness Week, new figures show that while fewer Australians are reporting scams, those who do are losing more money than ever. Here are lessons from one victim’s costly mistake, plus my tips to keep your money safe.
In a week called Scams Awareness Week we’re told Australians have lost over half-a-billion dollars to scam merchants. And while the good news is that reported scams are down, the bad news is the amount stolen has risen.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is the watchdog that oversees this new age online threat to our wealth but, at the end of the day, all of us need to change and be wary of any alert or warning, even if it looks like it’s from an official body or important financial institution.
The Daily Telegraph looked at an example of a local journalist who was scammed by a Malaysian crime group using a “a fake confirmation invoice for the purchase of a $698 laptop, she never bought via the Shop app, and a real notification popped up on her phone.”
First lesson don’t necessarily believe or react to alerts! She then called the phone number on the invoice to reverse the transaction.
Second lesson, don’t call an unknown business, instead check your banking/credit card details, to see if the transaction is real.
And here’s the third no-no lesson, described by the Daily Telegraph: “…only when she handed over her card details – and a one-time password reset code – to a person she believed was from PayPal that her money was stolen.”
The consumer in this case lost $2,300 off her credit card and $750 in savings, and while the credit card company reimbursed her, her bank didn’t!
And here’s the final lesson: it’s better to be in trouble with a real business for not paying a real bill than to become a patsy of a scam merchant.
The ACCC says 122,550 Aussie scam victims lost a combined $551.4 million – an 11% drop in the number of reports, in the first six months of 2026, compared with the same period last year.
But the amount scammed is on the rise, so take my tips:
- Don’t necessarily believe or react to alerts saying you owe money or you have been scammed!
- Don’t call an unknown business, instead check your banking/credit card details, to see if the transaction is real.
- Don’t hand over credit card or bank details to an unknown person/business following an alert.
- It’s better to be in trouble with a real business for not paying a real bill on time, than to become a patsy of a scam merchant.
- Check everything before you cough up.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the National Anti-Scam Centre general manager Jayde Richmond said the figures showed “a lot of people (are) losing small amounts of money” in shopping scams and similar quick-hit crimes, while sophisticated, longer-term scams were what’s “really driving up the numbers”.
