Scam!

We’ve all seen the headlines. It’s usually a variation of the same story: the “good guys” chasing the “bad guys,” with the villains always appearing to be three steps ahead. For a long time, I never really questioned who those “good guys” actually were—or what they were doing besides playing a permanent game of catch-up.

But my recent work has made me look under the hood of Australia’s new defence system, the reality is far more complex than a simple police chase. To stop a scam today, it takes an entire ecosystem.

Scams are real, and they’re everywhere#

Who hasn’t heard of scams? Many of us have. For most of the lucky ones, it’s just news we’ve heard. It’s not close or personal. But they are very real - In Australia in 2024, people lost $2.7 billion of their hard-earned money to scams.

What exactly is a scam?#

Legally, scams and fraud are different terms. While fraud is broader, scams typically involve two scenarios: