In the past 10 months, Australians have lost almost $500 million to scams, which is already far more than at this time last year.

Almost all of the losses were in investment scams, which have doubled in the past two years. Paul Haskell-Dowland, a professor of cybersecurity practice at Edith Cowan University, said this is not a particularly surprising trend and investment scams are expected to climb significantly in the coming years.

In just 10 months, Australians lost almost $500 million to scams

According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Scamwatch, Australians have lost more than $474 million to scams since January this year. So far in 2022, investment scams lead the way with losses of $320 million, while dating and relationship scams are in second place with losses of about $32 million. Other types of scams in the top 10 included false billing, identity theft, pyramid schemes and online shopping scams.

Mr Haskell-Dowland said Australians were actually losing much more money because only a small percentage admitted they had been scammed.

"Fraud statistics are always biased because they are inaccurate and because they don't include all victims," he said. "There is still a stigma attached to being scammed, but there is no shame in being the victim of a scam. When we look at fraud data, it's just the tip of the iceberg."

Why has investment fraud surged in the past two years?

In 2021, Australians reported losing more than $177 million to investment scams, while the figure surged by $143 million to $320 million in 2022.

"We are likely to see investment fraud continue to increase," Haskell-Dowland said. "We have seen a significant increase in its dominance."

Among them, digital currency fraud accounts for a large part of it. "Digital currencies tend to be very popular, and a lot of scams revolve around buying and selling digital currencies," Haskell-Dowland said.

In a report on fraud activity in 2021, the ACCC noted that urgent work is needed to combat cryptocurrency investment scams. The ACCC has described the "hype around cryptocurrencies" as the "Wild West," with many countries trying to tighten regulations on them.

Professor Haskell-Dowland added that digital currencies are a "relatively unregulated market," which is why there are so many scams.