The upcoming Global Financial Crimes Summit in Sydney will also bring together private business and law enforcement officials from the US, the Philippines, the Australian Taxation Office and the AFP.
Commonwealth Bank general manager of group fraud management services, James Roberts, who will speak at the summit, is optimistic that strengthening relationships between the private and public sectors will further reduce scams.
He points to the National Anti-Scam Centre’s “fusion cells”, which bring industry and government together to disrupt scams. The first fusion cell between August 2023 and February 2024 focused on investment scams, while the second is aimed at disrupting criminal groups advertising and offering jobs that do not exist.
James Roberts, CommBank general manager of group fraud.
“Everyone needs to uplift,” Roberts said. “If we all uplift at the same time, it’s not just squeezing on one side of the balloon and it bulges out somewhere else. It actually makes the problem smaller.”
A record 600,000 Australians reported scams in 2023 and lost $2.7 billion, according to the latest Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Targeting Scams report. It was the first time in six years that scam losses decreased year-on-year with the ACCC attributing it to an increased effort from banks and the federal government last year.
Roberts said there had been several wins over the past 18 months.
About a year ago, CBA alerted Optus to phishing scams some of their customers had fallen victim to, enabling the telco giant to block 47,000 text messages. Recently, CBA and ANZ shared 102 Facebook profiles their customers had identified as posting deepfake scam videos to Meta, which was able to link those accounts to other profiles and IP addresses to ultimately remove 8000 investment scam accounts.
The Joint Policing Coordination Centre this year disrupted cybercriminals after tip-offs from the private sector. Credit: AFP
Telstra also alerts CBA if one of their joint customers is on a phone call that “seems irregular and dodgy”, allowing the bank to be on the lookout for fraudulent internet banking. Roberts said it was hard to quantify exactly how much the intervention had saved Australians but that it would most likely be in the billions.
“A telco could block a dodgy website or an SMS from being accessed, but even if they’re doing their bit, the dodgy website still exists,” Roberts said. “So when we get the dodgy SMS, we give it to the telcos, but also public-private goes to the National Anti-Scam Centre’s takedown service, and they then correspond with the domain host to say ‘this is a fraudulent website, please take it down’.”
Banks also second staff to the Australian Federal Police, Robert said, to ensure data is shared with investigators more expeditiously.
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Ken Gamble, head of private investigation firm IFW Global, said financial crimes were rapidly evolving, and Australia was facing a crisis that demanded immediate action.
“Law enforcement alone has struggled to keep pace with the sophisticated tactics employed by international scam syndicates,” Gamble said.
A spokesperson for the ATO said success in combating cybercrime and financial crime requires strong collaboration among law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies and the financial sector.
“Public & Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements provide the opportunity to build relationships, establish trust, open dialogue and share information. The ATO is involved with a number of PPP arrangements both domestically and internationally.”
This includes the Fintel Alliance, a program led by the payments regulator Austrac made up of 29 Australian government and private sector organisations.
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