Deepfake investment scams are up 182% this year. The law meant to make platforms pay for hosting them doesn't fully switch on until March 2027 copertina

Deepfake investment scams are up 182% this year. The law meant to make platforms pay for hosting them doesn't fully switch on until March 2027

Deepfake investment scams are up 182% this year. The law meant to make platforms pay for hosting them doesn't fully switch on until March 2027

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ASIC pulled down more than 19,000 scam websites and ads in the past year. Social media platforms carrying the fake ads face almost no enforceable penalty for it until next autumn.Nineteen thousand. That’s how many scam sites and ads ASIC says it removed over the past year, up 182 percent on the year before. The driver isn’t more scammers working harder. It’s AI doing the work for them.Deepfake video, cloned voices, fake news sites built in an afternoon, all wrapped around a face Australians already trust. This year alone, scams using a famous face to sell a fake investment have cost people at least 7.4 million dollars, according to National Anti-Scam Centre data.Here’s the part that matters if you’re the one deciding whether to click: the law built to make platforms pay for hosting these ads exists, but it isn’t fully running yet. Full enforcement doesn’t land until 31 March 2027.Elsewhere in Auspol* The Fair Work Commission’s minimum standards order for on-demand food and grocery delivery work formally started on 17 August 2026 — at least $31.30 an hour for “engaged time” on platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash, the date set when the decision was confirmed back in August.* ASIC’s FY2025–26 enforcement wrap, released 20 July, reported $830 million in civil penalties secured and $644 million returned to Australians, alongside 25 criminal convictions and more than 250 investigations opened.* On 10 August, ASIC used its administrative powers to remove or restrict 87 people and businesses from financial services and 27 from credit services, including advisers linked to the collapse of the Shield and First Guardian Master Funds.Appreciate the newsletter but aren’t ready to pay for a subscription? Grab us a beer or snag the exclusive ad spot at the top of next week's newsletter.The deepfake economyYou’re scrolling and an ad plays. Decent production. A face you recognise — maybe finance commentator Alan Kohler explaining a “government-backed” trading platform, maybe a mining billionaire telling you she’s put her own money into it. None of it is real. The voice, the face, sometimes a whole fake news article sitting underneath as proof, all generated.ASIC chair Sarah Court’s advice is blunt: a quick search isn’t enough anymore to separate real from fake, because the fake sites are built specifically to survive that check.This isn’t a scattering of one-off cons. Nineteen thousand-plus sites and ads taken down in a year points to something closer to a production line.SmartCompany identified at least eleven Australian public figures currently being used as bait, spanning business (Dick Smith, Gina Rinehart, Alan Kohler), economics commentary (Tom Piotrowski, Stephen Koukoulas, Alan Oster), politics (Anthony Albanese, Angus Taylor, Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson) and broadcasting (John Laws).None of them authorised any of it. None of them see a cent from it. They’re simply recognisable enough to make a fake platform look credible for the few seconds it takes someone to decide whether to click.A note on how solid these particular numbers are: the 19,000-plus takedown figure and the 182 percent increase come from three outlets — SBS, the regulatory wire MLex, and SmartCompany — all reporting the same numbers on 17 August, not from an ASIC document we could locate and read directly. Treat the scale as well-reported rather than independently verified against a primary release.The trend line isn’t in question, though. This is the third public warning ASIC has issued this year about the same deepfake mechanism, following releases in April and July, with the numbers worsening each time.Part of why this particular scam works so well on a younger audience is distribution. It doesn’t arrive as a cold call anymore.It arrives as a targeted ad in the same feed as content from a creator you actually follow, placed there by an algorithm that has no way of distinguishing a genuine endorsement from a fabricated one. It just knows the ad gets clicks, and shows it to more people who look like the people who already clicked.Who’s actually on the hookThis is where the accountability trail splits in two, and splits right now.Banks already have exposure. In June, the Federal Court ordered HSBC’s Australian arm to pay a $35 million penalty, not for a scam happening on its platform but for how it handled customers afterwards: an average 144-day delay investigating scam reports, and gaps in fraud controls on its internal payment rail.HSBC has already paid roughly $21.5 million in compensation, with more due, and recovered $6.5 million for customers. That penalty sits under an existing rulebook, the ePayments Code, and a court that used it.Social media platforms, where these deepfake ads are actually served, sit under a newer and different rulebook: the Scams Prevention Framework. Banks, telcos and digital platforms — social media, messaging services, search engines — were all ...
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