Bank impersonation among top scam trends: ACCC

The report — which compiled data reported to the ACCC’s Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX), IDCARE, and other government agencies — revealed that investment scams were the highest loss category ($1.5 billion), followed by remote access scams ($229 million) and payment redirection scams ($224 million).

While Scamwatch received 239,237 scam reports last year, a 16.5 per cent drop on the number of reports received in 2021, financial losses reported to Scamwatch in 2022 totalled more than $569 million, a 76 per cent increase compared to losses reported in the previous year.

Despite fewer reports to Scamwatch, losses experienced by each victim rose by more than 50 per cent last year, to an average of almost $20,000.

Scamwatch data also found that small and microbusinesses lost $13.7 million to scams in 2022, a 95 per cent increase compared to the previous year. The biggest contributor to these losses were payment redirection scams (or business email compromises).

Overall, there was a 73 per cent increase in scam losses across the Australian business community last year, totalling $23.2 million.

Bank impersonation issues

Among one of the key trends identified by the ACCC was a prevalence of phishing attacks where the cyber criminals successfully impersonate a borrower’s lending institution. 

The report outlined that impersonation scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated and successfully tricking consumers into providing personal information such as banking details or driver’s licence or to transfer money. 

This was often the case where the scammers impersonate bank brands — often pretending to be from the cyber security or fraud area of the bank — and clone real phone numbers or messaging.

It flagged that Scamwatch received 14,603 reports about bank impersonations with more than $20 million reported lost. 

More than 90 of these reporters individually lost between $40,000 and $800,000. 

NAB customers lost more than $300k

It provided an example where a consumer lost over $300,000 after she received a text message from a scammer who has used the NAB SMS sender ID and appeared in her regular NAB messages.

It said she had pre-approval for a $6,000 loan. After calling the number in the message to outline that she had not applied for a loan, the scammer — posing as NAB — suggested that her account must have been compromised.

They then sent her a text (via a cloned NAB SMS) with a reference number and told her that another person was logged into her banking system and she should quickly move money out of her account to protect herself.

The client then moved $300,000 from her account, after which time she was told it was a scam. The criminals reportedly told the borrower: ‘We are in Brisbane, come find me’. At this point, the client terminated the call and contacted the real NAB fraud department.

Speaking of the record amount lost in 2022, ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe 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.

“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.”

‘Banks need to lift their game or face bigger fines’: Stephen Jones MP

Noting the report, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said: “When Australians are already doing it tough, to be losing $3 billion to households and small businesses is devastating. [It’s] a significant jump up over the last 12 months — around about an 80 per cent increase. And since 2020 we’ve seen over 220 per cent increase in average losses.

“What we’re seeing is scammers moving on to an industrial scale using new technologies, new capacity to attack Australian households and businesses. And a lot more needs to be done to be combating this.

“I think all businesses and government are now on notice that the losses are big, the stakes are big and we have to lift our game.”

He added that banks “need to lift their game”, flagging that Treasury and the ACCC are working on new codes of practice to “ensure that the obligations on banks are clear” and that a “very high” bar is set around what banks are expected to do to protect their customers in relation to scams and “to ensure that money is kept safe, that their customers’ details are kept safe and that they know exactly what they’ve got to do and consumers know exactly what they can expect from their banks”.

He continued: “Increasing the fines and penalties has to be a part of the options that we put in place. 

“We went to the election promising that we’d look at increasing the fines and penalties for breaches of new codes of practice, and that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

Government, law enforcement, and the private sector have been working to improve collaborative efforts to support the community in the fight against scams. 

The federal government is establishing a National Anti-Scam Centre, banks are putting in place SMS filtering technologies to put obligations on phone companies to ensure that they’re filtering some of these cloned texts, and a new anti-scam campaign has been launched by the banking system to raise awareness.

The ACCC advised that there were three steps consumers could follow to avoid scams:

• Stop — Take your time before giving money or personal information.
• Think — Ask yourself if the message or call could be fake.
• Protect – Act quickly if something feels wrong. Contact your bank and report scams to Scamwatch.

[Related: Serious about cyber]