Australians lost A$2.18 billion to scams in 2025 — up 7.8% on the year before. Below are the headline numbers, the most costly scam types, and the longer-term trend, all drawn from the National Anti-Scam Centre's Targeting Scams Report 2025 (which pools data from Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the AFCX, IDCARE and ASIC). Figures are current as at the report's March 2026 release; sources are linked at the end.
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The headline numbers (2025)
- A$2.18 billion — total reported scam losses in Australia in 2025.
- +7.8% — increase in losses versus 2024.
- 274,577 — reports that involved a financial loss.
- 481,523 — total scam reports made across the reporting bodies (including no-loss reports).
In other words, reports have broadly stabilised while the money lost per successful scam has grown — a sign that scams are becoming more targeted and more sophisticated, not less.
Top scam types by loss
Five categories accounted for roughly 60% of all reported losses in 2025:
| Rank | Scam type | 2025 losses (AUD) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Investment scams | $837.7 million |
| 2 | Payment-redirection scams (incl. BEC) | $166.8 million |
| 3 | Romance scams | $139.9 million |
| 4 | Phishing scams | $97.6 million |
| 5 | Remote-access scams | $69.9 million |
Investment scams dominate the losses — frequently powered now by deepfake impersonations of trusted figures. Payment-redirection and business email compromise (BEC) sit second and are the category that most directly hits businesses rather than consumers — see our BEC & invoice-fraud defence guide.
The five-year trend
The long-term picture is a decline from the peak, overlaid with a recent uptick:
- Reported scam losses have fallen 29.7% since the 2022 peak of A$3.1 billion.
- But 2025's A$2.18 billion is up 7.8% on 2024 — the first material rise after the post-peak decline.
The fall from the peak reflects coordinated disruption — bank, telco and platform interventions, and the stand-up of the National Anti-Scam Centre. The 2025 rise is the warning: as defences improve, scammers concentrate on higher-value, better-engineered attacks, and the loss per victim climbs.
What it means for business
Two things worth being clear about. First, these figures count reported consumer scams. The losses businesses carry — payment redirection and BEC against the organisation, insider theft and embezzlement, first-party and chargeback fraud, account takeover — are largely additional to this total, and a large share is never reported at all. The real cost of financial crime to Australian business is therefore considerably higher than any single scam figure.
Second, the direction of travel is unambiguous: fraud is large, organised, increasingly AI-assisted, and rising year on year. That reframes prevention, detection, transaction monitoring and forensic investigation as core operating controls, not optional extras. Financial Crime Advisory builds and runs exactly those controls — for banks, fintechs, payments businesses, and any private business, listed company or government department that moves money. If you want a straight read on where you're exposed, talk to a specialist.
Sources
All figures above are from Australian government and official sources. Please cite the primary source (the National Anti-Scam Centre / ACCC) when reusing these numbers.
- National Anti-Scam Centre / ACCC — Targeting Scams Report 2025: scamwatch.gov.au/research-and-resources/targeting-scams-report (full report PDF: nasc.gov.au).
- ACCC media release — Continued action critical to combat fraud as annual scam losses exceed $2 billion: accc.gov.au.
- Report inputs: Scamwatch, ReportCyber (ACSC), the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX), IDCARE and ASIC.
Note: scam-loss figures capture reported consumer scams and understate total business and financial-crime losses. Figures current as at the report's March 2026 release.