Source : Perth Now news
Scam rates in Australia have skyrocketed over the last 12 months, with scammers adopting new and threatening practices to target the savings of vulnerable people.
New data released by ANZ found that scam activity increased 18 per cent year-on-year from October 2025 to June 2026.
The data, released to support Scam Awareness Week, found scams continued to be one of the biggest financial threats facing Australians.
In 2025, Australians lost $2.18bn according to the National Anti Scam Centre, with the new data suggesting even greater amounts will be lost this year.
ANZ scams lead Ben Verhoef said advancements in technology are making it harder for people to distinguish between real business communications and fabricated scam attempts.
“I think scammers do use AI tools to help craft a better message or a message that reads more professionally with better grammar,” he said.
“We used to recommend things like looking for typographical errors or fonts that don’t look quite right, but to be honest, they’ve overcome a lot of those hurdles.”
Online shopping traps that fell under goods and services scams were the most common tactic used by scammers.
Impersonation, investment and romance scams were also highly prevalent, with romance and friendship scams reporting an increase in customer losses when compared to previous data and ranking the fastest-growing scam type.
The data also identified the end of financial year and university intake seasons as periods that experienced a spike in scam-related activity.
International students were also flagged as highly susceptible to scam attacks, with Mr Verhoef describing some common tactics used to target vulnerable members in this demographic.
“We’ve seen scams use interpreting services or technology that allows them to communicate with victims in their natural language,” he said.
“Particularly for these students, obviously being a younger demographic I don’t think they often know what to do or how to verify and ascertain whether it’s a real or a threat,” he said.
“Because of that very real fear exposed to them, they are inclined to comply with the instructions.”
Mr Verhoef recalled examples where international students were held hostage by impersonators that pretended to be police or authority figures from their home countries.
He also said students were targeted by scammers offering hundreds or thousands of dollars to access their Australian bank account details once they’ve finished their degrees.
“It involves these students being recruited or offered by scammers or fraudsters to rent their bank account details or even sell their bank account credentials,” he said.
“From a bank’s perspective, we then lose visibility over who’s actually operating that bank account and it just gives the frauds and the scam a clear ability to move funds in a way that’s completely unconnected to themselves.”
Despite the rise, ANZ reported that scam losses fell by 24 per cent, with over $100 million saved or recovered by the bank.
While customers abandoned more than 476,000 payments over mismatched details, ANZ said there was no shame in being scammed and to speak out if you think you may be at risk.
“We continue to get better at identifying these fraud and scam transactions. So I think the earlier our detection tools are able to identify the suspicious transactions and intervene in that, the better,” Mr Verhoef said.
“We do a lot of work in-house to constantly look at what’s happening in both a fraud and scam landscape and adjust our detection rules.”
