ABC The World Today 28/5/26 – Scams

Australians could soon be reimbursed thousands of dollars if they fall victim to scams where people are tricked into handing over their money under a new plan being considered by the federal government.  

The rules would force banks, telcos and digital platforms to automatically reimburse victims who have been scammed $3,000 or less. Experts say authorised payments made because of deception by fraudsters is a growing problem and has surpassed credit card fraud in some countries. Here’s Kathleen O’Connor.  

Melbourne woman Jan Marshall fell love in 2012, but it wasn’t real.  

“I got caught in a romance scam and lost $260,000 over the period of about 10 weeks, including taking money out of my self-managed super fund.” 

She says back then she couldn’t get any help from anyone.  

“Luckily, I was a working woman and was able to survive quite well. After a few months at least, the first month I was actually flat broke.” 

According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in 2025 Australians lost $2.18 billion to scams. So today announced strengthening protections for Australians in an effort to disrupt scams.  

Daniel Mulino is the Assistant Treasurer.  

“So what we’re looking for is a scheme with the under $3,000 scams where it’s much more automated or semiautomated. It’s really not going to make sense to have tens of thousands of cases in that realm swamp the dispute resolution process. That would lead to huge costs and also delays. So we want to have some kind of automated or semiautomated process and we’re consulting on that.”  

There are already existing codes in place so victims can claim some of their money back. But the federal government is considering a new plan to automatically reimburse victims with losses under $3,000.  

Luke Coleman is from the Australian Telecommunications Alliance.  

“There is a great risk that automatic compensation will create a honeypot for fraudsters. We’ve seen the experience in the United Kingdom where they have an automatic compensation model. That has resulted in fraudsters exploiting the system. They are deliberately scammed by someone they know and then they request reimbursement from their bank.”  

Luke Coleman says the telecommunications sector has already made significant efforts to reduce the impact of scams.  

“We need to have a model where compensation for scams losses only occurs if regulated companies have failed to comply with their regulatory obligations.” 

Dr Kate Gould from Monash University is a neuropsychologist who researches scams. She’s welcomed the government’s idea.  

“I think this proposal to semi-automatically reimburse scam victims where the losses are $3,000 or less, I think is a really encouraging start and something that a lot of scam advocates have been hoping would be adopted here.”  

But Dr Gould application process for reimbursement will be made easy.  

“If this is implemented in a way that doesn’t require a lot of administrative work and hoops to jump through, then I think that would be really positive as well.”  

Melbourne woman Jan Marshall says while the government has increased protections for victims compared to a decade ago, more needs to be done to punish offenders.  

“I understand that the government is trying to do things and it’s very difficult because of the jurisdictional issues where most of the perpetrators are overseas. But I really just think it’s, I’m not sure how much it helps to give somebody a $3,000 payment.” 

Bridget Fitzgerald there.