The latest Targeting Scams Report shows Australians lost $2.18 billion to scams in 2025, with investment, payment‑redirection, and phishing schemes eroding household savings, undermining borrowing capacity and putting property transactions at risk for brokers and their clients.
Of 481,523 scam reports lodged across Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, IDCARE, and ASIC, more than 274,000 involved financial losses.
Investment scams alone accounted for $837.7 million, while payment redirection scams caused $166.8 million in losses – a direct threat to home buyers and property investors moving large sums for deposits and settlements.
ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe (pictured) said scams are often described as a “wicked problem” because they are complex, fast‑evolving, and resistant to simple solutions. Lowe added that the report “highlights the collaboration and shared accountability needed to tackle the harm caused by scams both here in Australia and globally.”
The data show older Australians remain disproportionately exposed. People aged 65 and over make up about 17.1% of the population but accounted for 26.5 per cent of total losses reported to Scamwatch.
Scammers are also shifting further online. Reports of online‑based scams with a loss jumped 31.8% in 2025, with associated financial losses up 21%, while text‑message scams fell sharply.
Lowe warned that “as Australia and indeed the world faces increasing sophistication in scam activity through artificial intelligence (AI) and the industrialisation of criminal syndicates through scam compounds, it is clear more needs to be done, quickly and at scale.”
Regulators are increasingly treating this as a system‑wide risk rather than a one‑off consumer issue. Recent commentary from ASIC and the Council of Financial Regulators has highlighted scams and cyber‑enabled fraud as growing threats to confidence in the financial system, and has put pressure on lenders and intermediaries to tighten verification checks.
That regulatory focus is being echoed in industry data: Equifax’s latest Fraud Index reports a 25.5% rise in first‑party loan manipulation and a 90.9% surge in money‑mule activity in 2025, with fraud in credit products – including mortgages – now growing faster than fraud in non‑credit products.
The Targeting Scams Report notes that coordinated disruption efforts are ramping up, from website and social media takedowns to the blocking of high‑risk phone numbers. But Lowe stressed that “the actions demonstrated in the report are made possible because Australians took the time to share their experiences,” urging consumers to report suspicious activity so authorities and industry can better protect the system.
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