Country Consumer Scam Reporting Tells a Story

Every year there are a few countries that report annual consumer scam losses.  This is so important because only with statistics can you tell how severe the problem is. The annual consumer scam loss reports only include the ‘reported’ losses. So, we know the actual losses are 10-20 times higher because most people do not report scam losses.

When you read the annual scam loss reports, you can quickly tell the difference between countries on how they are fighting scams. In this article we will be looking at three countries (Singapore, Australia and the United States) and how they report consumer scam losses. The UK Finance 2025 fraud and scam loss report, from another country with good statistics, is not due out until late May 2026.

You will see in both the Singapore and Australia reports, the governments focus on both the scam losses and the controls the governments have in place to reduce scams. A number of significant controls are included in these two reports, including measured benefits for some of the controls. 

Whereas in the US report, the report is heavy on loss statistics and light on controls. So far, there are no meaningful scam regulations in the US.  The one bright spot is the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is looking to add regulations to help the telcos stop scams. One example of this is adding a strong ‘know your customer’ requirement before telco providers allow companies to use telco services to access consumers.

Here is a quick snapshot of the scam loss statistics for the three countries.

In all three countries investment scams have risen to the top category.  This has become the biggest component of consumer scam losses. It is 36-41% of total scam losses for these three countries.

Let’s look at these three countries.

Singapore

The Singapore annual report is entitled “Annual Scam and Cybercrime Brief 2025”. It is most unique in that it not only talks about the scam losses, but what the Singaporean government agencies are doing to 1) prevent scams, 2) disrupt scams in process and 3) recover scam funds. Singapore may be the most active government working to prevent consumer scams. 

Statistics

In 2025, both the number of scams and the dollar amount losses dropped. The number of scams went from 51,504 in 2024 to 37,308 in 2025 and the dollar loss went from S$1.1 billion in 2024 to S$913 million, a drop of 18%. See Chart 1 for total scam losses since 2021. Note how Singapore is showing funds recovered in the past two years.  Funds recovery is a big initiative in Singapore.

Figure 1. Total Scam Losses and Amounts Recovered. Source: Singapore Police Force Annual Scam and Cybercrime Brief 2025

Investment scams were S$336 million and in second place were government impersonation scams at S$243 million. See Chart 2 for the summary of the top scam types. 

Figure 2. Breakdown of Scam Types by S$ amount lost. Source: Singapore Police Force Annual Scam and Cybercrime Brief 2025

Crypto currency involved losses were S$182 million (20% of scam losses), with the bulk 64% (S$117 million) being Tether.

The Singapore report also highlighted the top contact methods by the scammers.  Chart 3 shows this information. This shows why the Singaporean government is aggressively adding controls to telcos and digital platforms to help reduce scams.

Figure 3. Top Contact Methods by Scammers. Source: Singapore Police Force Annual Scam and Cybercrime Brief 2025

The 2025 scam losses would have been dramatically higher if it wasn’t for the significant actions and controls Singapore has deployed over the past three years.  In the next part, we will list some of these actions and controls and what the tangible benefits were. If this were a ‘lessons learned’ document for other countries, this next part would be it. Some countries do some of the items Singapore does, but nobody comes close to all of the items Singapore does.

Actions

Even more impressive in the Singapore report is a large section listing the ongoing actions and required controls to prevent scams. Most significant are the scam disruption and recovery activities.

1. Project A.S.T.R.O. ”leverages technology to identify and alert potential scam victims.”  In 2025 the Anti-Scam Command (ASCom) “worked with partner banks to conduct six operations, sending over 32,800 SMSes to alert more than 26,000 victims” they were in the middle of a scam.  This saved over S$265 million in potential losses.

2. ASCom works with police and banks to proactively intervene real-time with victims who are attempting money transfers. This saved another S$72 million in potential losses.

3. Singapore is part of 13 jurisdictions (Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Republic of Korea, Republic of Maldives, Malaysia, Australia, Macao, Canada, Indonesia, Brunei, South Africa and Dubai) that are members of Frontier+ that work together in identifying money mules and support each other in funds recovery.  In May 2026, the Singapore Police Force’s Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) used Frontier+ (Dubai Anti-Fraud Centre and the Royal Oman Police) to recover USD $6.6 million from a BEC case.

4. In a recent operation in 2026, ASC worked with cryptocurrency exchanges and TRM Labs and Chain Analysis and identified ‘in-process’ scam victims and saved almost S$3 million.  The ASC had another operation in early 2026 that ‘foiled over 300 scams and saved over S$24 million.”  There is also a government Crypto Tracing Team that monitors virtual assets used in scams.  CTT had over 380 successful interventions, saving an additional S$8.8 million.

5. Singapore has a suite of Scam Analytics and Tactical Intervention System (SATIS) tools “to swiftly triage, assess and disrupt scam-related websites. SATIS automatically analyzes over 400,000 web sites daily and disrupts around 40,000 scam web sites monthly.  There is a similar activity, SATIS+, to disrupt scam mobile numbers.

6. GovTech Singapore is the first government agency to send scam signals to the Global Signal Exchange (GSE) to help disrupt scams worldwide.

The Singapore 2025 Brief also spent significant time describing the scam controls in place in Singapore to help prevent consumer scams.

1. The Protection from Scams Act went live in July 2025. This allows the police to restrict banking accounts of victims ‘deeply entrenched’ in scams.

2. The Criminal Law Bill went live in December 2025. This creates serious penalties for criminals involved in scam offenses, including money mule accounts. Penalties can include ‘caning’ up to 24 strokes.

3. Singapore requires Meta apply verification methods using government issued identification for all Facebook ads. As a result, “scam cases on Facebook decreased by about 38% from July to September 2025. In September 2025, Meta was directed to strengthen their measures against government impersonation.

4. In November 2025 Singapore directed Apple and Google to implement measures to prevent government impersonation scams.

5. Singapore has directed online service providers to disrupt scam content and take action to remove such content within 24 hours of it being identified.

6. Consumers can use the government issued Scam Shield app and helpline to help consumers to avert scams.

7. Singapore has recommended eCommerce sites use government IDs to validate users.

8. For banks, Singapore has several requirements:

   1. Improved authentication by removing OTP codes.

   2. Use Money Lock which blocks money from online accounts from being moved.  Currently S$44 billion is ‘Money Locked’

   3. Cooling periods for high-risk activities.

   4. In app notification that call is coming from a bank (soon).

   5. Overall increased friction to help reduce scam losses.

   6. Have active money mule detection (soon for crypto currency exchanges).

   7. Allow customer over 55 to immediately block unintended monetary flows (‘CPF Safety Switch’)

      
      

9.   For telcos:

   1. Singapore requires single SMS Sender ID.  Since inception there have been “zero scam SMSes sent from the gov, sg ID.”

   2. Customers can block all incoming international calls and SMSes.

   3. The government has been working with telcos to detect and block scam numbers.  Since mid-2024, 100,000 mobile lines have been disrupted.

Australia

Statistics

The Australian government’s National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) reported 2025 consumer scam numbers rose in 2025. The AUS $ loss was $2.18 billion, an increase of 7.8%.  This is disappointing given that in 2024 Australian scam losses dropped from $2.7 billion to $2 billion (a 26% reduction).  With a population of only 27 million, even AUS $2.18 billion is a very big scam loss number.  As an example, the UK has a population of about 62 million (less Scotland, which is excluded from UK APP scam numbers) and maybe £500 million per year in APP scam losses (AUS $ 1 billion).

The number of scam reports in 2025 was down slightly, at 481,523 (down 2.7%).  Chart 4 shows the scam losses for the past five years

Figure 4. Australian Scam Losses 2021-2025 (AUS $). Source: NASC

Investment scams top the 2025 losses, just like in 2024.  See Chart 5 for the top five scam loss categories.

Figure 5. Top Five Scam Loss Categories (AUS $). Source NASC

Actions

Like Singapore, Australia has a number actions they deploy to prevent scams.  It is not yet a ‘whole-of-ecosystem’ approach like Singapore, as the Scam Prevention Framework program that will require banks, telcos and digital platforms to add controls to help prevent consumer scams is still being planned out and may not launch until 2027.

Here are some of the NASC actions underway in Australia from the 2025 scam report:

1. Assessed 8,400 websites and had over 7,500 websites removed.

2. Referred over 4,200 phone numbers and 921 unique sender IDs to telecom partners for mitigation.

3. Coordinated the removal of over 600 betting web sites and 600 social media profiles.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) enforces anti-scam rules.

1. ACMA investigated 8 telco firms, resulting in AUS $4 million in fines.

2. SMS Sender ID Register will launch July 1 2026.

3. Since the telco Scam Code was introduced, the number of scams where the contact method is phone is 74% below 2021 numbers.

4. ACMA is promoting innovation.  One example is the Apate.io program using AI bots to disrupt scammers by tying them up on phone calls.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) had several accomplishments:

1. Coordinated the removal of almost 12,000 web sites.  ASIC Is looking for a long-term provider to help in web site takedowns.

2. Listing over 100 companies and web sites that are suspicious.

The Australian banks have formally introduced several new controls since late 2023:

1. Confirmation of Payee (all banks)

2. Apate bot disruption (CommBank)

3. SafeBlock and Digital Padlock which allows customers to instantly block account activity (Westpac and ANZ)

4. Customer-owned banks are using The Fraud Reporting Exchange, issuing more than 3,000 requests to receiving banks to retrieve scam funds.

The United States

Statistics

The FBI’s IC3 released its 2025 Internet Crime Report.  The report shows a continued dramatic increase in fraud and scam losses.  Chart 6 shows losses by year going back to 2001.  Here are the startling facts:

1. 2025 reported losses are at $20.9 billion.

2. Losses increased 26% from 2024 (up over $4 billion).

3. Losses are up 20 times from 2015, when reported losses were only $1 billion.

Figure 6. Losses by year going back to 2001. Source FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report

The report showed that 50% of the losses were in the age group 50+.  The top six categories of losses by dollar amount are shown in Chart 7.  Although most of this loss involves consumers, note how Business Email Compromise, which began around 2011, is still a very high $3 billion per year.

Figure 7. Top 6 Categories of Loss. Source FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report

The report also identified that cryptocurrency was involved in $11.4 billion of the $20.9 billion in reported losses.

Another interesting part of the report identified the type transactions used for the various fraud activity.  Chart 8 shows the top reported transaction types in fraud.  Cryptocurrency dominates in investment fraud, while wires and ACH dominate in BEC fraud.  Cryptocurrency plays an active role in all of the example types of fraud. A small but growing trend shows $311 million lost to scam couriers physically picking up cash and precious metals (mainly gold) from victims in tech support and government impersonation scams.

Figure 8. Top Reported Transaction Types in Fraud. Source FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report

The IC3 report also highlighted the growing use of AI to commit these crimes.  Examples are creating fake social media profiles, manipulating video and audio, creating synthetic content, and faking voices for the grandparent scams.

Actions

1. The IC3 report showed the success of the IC3 Financial Fraud Kill Chain.  IC3 was involved in attempting funds recovery in 3.900 incidents and was successful in freezing $679 million at a 58% success rate.

2. The FBI and US Secret Service Operation Level Up program alerted almost 3,800 victims in 2025 that they were being scammed (78% were unaware).  Since the launch in 2024, $500 million has been saved.

3. The US Attorney’s Office District of Columbia started the Scam Center Strike Force in fall 2025.  In 2026, they arrested two Chinese nationals who managed a cryptocurrency investment fraud compound in Burma and froze $700 million in scam funds.  This was accomplished with support from the Thai government.

4. The Department of Justice and FBI worked with the Indian government to dismantle scam call centers in India.

Closing Thoughts

Consumer scams continue to generate significant losses in 2025.  With the increased use of GenAI capabilities, consumer scam will continue to grow.   We see continued growth in:

1. Investment scams

2. Use of cryptocurrencies, especially in the investment scams.

3. Romance scams in the US, up almost 50%.

By looking at three countries and their annual reports, we see different approaches to attempting to solve this problem. In Singapore and Australia (especially with the upcoming Scam Prevention Framework program), there is a significant effort by the government to change the behaviors of banks, telcos and digital platforms. Singapore may be the most ‘whole-of-ecosystem’ approach today. 

For these two countries, controls are in the form of regulation by governments (requiring action by banks, telcos and digital platforms), actions by governments themselves and alliances being set up. It shows clear action. 

In the US on the other hand, so far, we see discussion (new bills in congress, presentations on consumer scams), but not really as much action, other than the recent US Scam Center Strike Force. Unlike Singapore, the UK, and soon in Australia, there are no regulation in the US for financial institutions to have scam controls and money mule management.  Yes, some banks are on the journey to add consumer scam prevention units and the associate controls, but not enough. In fact, it is hard to really tell how much scam control exists in the US, since so little information is public.

The 2025 scam reports by Australia and Singapore show the commitment to use/require many tools to help prevent consumer scams.  When the UK Finance 2025 fraud and scams report comes out soon, we will see a similar ‘statistics plus controls’ type of report, like Singapore and Australia.  It is good to see that there are several countries that are moving the right direction. Is the US truly an outlier in the fight against consumer scams? With scams having increased in the US by $4 billion in 2025, and a twenty-fold increase since 2015, the answer is clear.

About Ken Palla

Since 2005, Ken has been in Online Security. He was a Director at MUFG Union Bank, retiring in early 2019. He helped shape the initial responses to the U.S. 2005 and 2011 FFIEC Regulatory Guidance to improve online security for US Banks. He is an early adopter and has selected and implemented a number of online security products. Ken was an advisor to the RSA eFraud Global Forum and a Program Committee member for the annual San Francisco RSA Conference. He was on The Knoble Scam Committee for three years. He has published many white papers—on the need to focus on online customer safety, on online authentication and on how to select a multi-factor authentication solution. Most recently, his white papers and blogs have been on consumer financial scams. These recent white papers and blogs focus on controls to reduce scams and what countries are doing about scam reimbursement. He also was the editor for the complete list of definitions of financial scams, published by The Knoble in 2022. In 2019, he received the Legends of Fraud Award at the 3rd annual FraudCON conference in Israel. He is currently consulting to banks and to online security vendors.