Fusion cells bring together expertise from different government and private sector participants to address specific, urgent scam problems.
How fusion cells disrupt and prevent scams
Our first fusion cell looked at investment scams and ran from August 2023 to February 2024.
We're coordinating a second fusion cell to to disrupt criminal groups advertising or offering jobs that do not exist. See more detail about the employment scams fusion cell.
Disrupting investment scams
The first fusion cell aimed to:
- identify investment scam campaigns and their enabling technologies
- block the use of these enablers
- identify barriers to prevent and disrupt scams.
This fusion cell successfully disrupted investment scams by:
- referring over 1000 scam ads, advertorials and videos to digital platforms for removal
- taking down 220 investment scam websites
- diverting 113 consumer calls to confirmed scam numbers to a recorded warning.
Preventing investment scams
Scam prevention strategies started by the fusion cell have continued. These include:
- a new Scamwatch feature that makes it easier to report scam ads on social media and Google, Meta and Microsoft search results
- working with Optus and Telstra so that recorded scam warnings can be used by more telecommunication providers
- automatically referring relevant Scamwatch reports to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)’s scam website takedown service
- a 3-month data-sharing trial on investment scam payments
- producing a handbook of disruption strategies to help industry identify and combat artificial intelligence (AI) trading platform scams.
Fusion cell report
About the investment scam fusion cell report
Video transcript
[Voice over]
The National Anti-Scam Centre's aim is to tackle scams by bringing together expertise and resources from across government, law enforcement and industry.
One of our key initiatives is to coordinate task forces called fusion cells and coordinate the expertise from various government and industry organisations to take action on specific scam problems.
Our first fusion cell targeted investment scams and was co-led by the ACCC and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and involved participants from over 35 organisations.
The Investment Scam Fusion Cell successfully implemented strategies to target two scam types. Impostor bond scams and AI trading platform scams.
Aside from that, the stronger relationships that we forged in working together on the fusion cell will play an important role in helping tackle investment scams and other scam types in years ahead.
Some of the important actions that the Investment Scam Fusion Cell took included: implementing strategies to take down scam online advertisements, videos and apps from digital platforms; the cell identified and referred investment scam websites to ASIC for takedown and diverted scam phone numbers to recorded warnings.
These recordings break the contact between the scammer and their victim and we estimate is likely to have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars from being lost during the three-month trial, if not more.
Developing industry best practice guides for identifying and combating imposter bond and AI trading platform scams was another initiative.
You can learn more about our Investment Scam Fusion Cell, as well as how it will continue to have an impact, through our ongoing work in the upcoming report.
[end transcript]