Australians lost over $851 million to scams in 2020, a record amount, as scammers took advantage of the pandemic to defraud unsuspecting people, according to the ACCC’s latest Targeting Scams report released today.

The report compiles data from Scamwatch, ReportCyber, other government agencies and 10 banks and financial intermediaries, and is based on more than 444,000 reports.

Scammers unfortunately took advantage of the global environment, which led to higher than usual financial and personal information loss.

Australians lost over $850 million to scams and made 444,164 scam reports in total to Scamwatch, ReportCyber, other government agencies, banks and payment platforms in 2020. Based on this combined data, the scams causing the most financial harm to Australians in 2020 were:

• ƒ $328 million lost to investment scams
• ƒ $131 million lost to romance scams
• ƒ $128 million lost to business email compromise (payment redirection scams).

Scamwatch.gov.au remains the primary government website where Australians report scams. Roughly 48% (216,087) of all scam reports were made to the ACCC’s Scamwatch service, which is the highest number of reports since it commenced. The true amount lost to scams is likely to be considerably higher than that reported.

Whilst losses reported to Scamwatch increased 23% compared to the previous year, ACCC had expected that the increase might be much higher due to the unprecedented nature of 2020. Globally, government and the private sector identified significant increases in scam and fraud activity during the pandemic.

The top 3 categories of reports to Scamwatch were phishing, threats to life, arrest or other (threat based scams) and identity theft. Reports in these 3 categories often involved the impersonation of government agencies to obtain personal information or demand money.

In 2020, combined financial loss to investment scams was a record $328 million. For the banks, Scamwatch and ASIC it was the category with the highest losses. Scamwatch reports increased by 63% to 7,295 and losses rose slightly to $66 million. Almost 34% of people who reported an investment scam lost money, with an average loss of $26,713.

The ACCC notes that it appears to be increasingly difficult for people to identify legitimate investment opportunities from scams. Scammers no longer just rely on professional looking websites. They now have the ability to contact people through phone, apps, social media and other means.

The regulators saw more fraudulent celebrity endorsements of investment opportunities advertised across digital platforms as well as scammers posing as romance interests to ‘bait’ people into scam investments.