The federal government has hailed a victory in its war against scammers with new statistics revealing the amount Australians are losing to scams has almost halved in the past year.

The National Anti-Scams Centre’s second quarterly report revealed that Australians reported losing $82 million to scams in the October to December quarter of 2023, a drop of 26 per cent from the previous quarter and a decline of 43 per cent year-on-year.

This comes six months after the federal government stumped up the National Anti-Scams Centre and amped up its efforts to combat scammers.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said the decline in scam losses shows the government tactics are working.

“Thanks to the government’s investment in tackling scams head on, our scammer crackdown is helping keep people’s money safe,” Jones said in a statement.

“Within six months the trend that saw scam losses double year-on-year has completely flipped – people’s money is safer because the government is fighting back.

“Behind every dollar lost to scams is a heartbreaking story – we are working hard to intercept these malicious criminals before they can inflict pain on innocent Australians.”

The quarterly report revealed a near-40% reduction in losses to investment scams, with Australians losing $52.4 million in the last three months of 2023.

Losses from cryptocurrency scams dropped by just under 75 per cent to $12.4 million, while losses by bank transfer dropped by more than 30 per cent to $40.2 million.

Scams involving contact over social media also dropped by more than 20 per cent, with Australians reporting losses of $15.9 million through this medium.

“During the October to December 2023 quarter, we continued to see progress towards our vision of making Australia the world’s hardest target for scammers,” the National Anti-Scams Centre report said.

"Based on Scamwatch data, we are cautiously optimistic that the trend of accelerating increases in losses to scams is beginning to turn.”

Losses down by half

The statistics show that compared to the previous year, scam losses in November 2023 dropped by 50 per cent.

More than 67,000 scam reports were made to Scamwatch in the quarter, a 14 per cent quarterly drop and 8 per cent yearly decrease.

The size of losses to these scams dropped more dramatically. Australians lost on average $1,124 to a scam, down nearly 40 per cent year-on-year.

Investment scams caused the greatest losses amongst the type of scams. It comes after it was revealed that ASIC had taken down 3,500 websites in the first six months of the government’s new scam website takedown service.

This new service is removing nearly 20 fake sites every day.

It involves the corporate regulator referring suspicious sites to a third-party company specialising in cybercrime detection and disruption.

If these suspicions are confirmed, the service begins the process of taking down the scam website.

Jones said the reduction in scams is based on the government’s first phase of its crackdown, with the second phase to include the development of mandatory industry codes to impose stronger obligations on banks, telcos and social media platforms, and the launch of an SMS Sender Registry to block scammers from pretending to be trusted brands and government agencies.

“While this report is a promising sign that our plan is working, we urge people to remain vigilant to scammers and keep up to date with advice from the ACCC to protect themselves,” Jones said.

The Labor government has allocated $10.9 million to the SMS blocking service, which aims to prevent scam messages from reaching Australians.

And late last year, Treasury released a consultation paper for the new Scams Code Framework, which would see the creation of a range of sector-specific codes and standards.