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.
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The deepfake economy
You’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 hook
This 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 formally designated as regulated sectors under the framework in May 2026, overseen respectively by ASIC, ACMA and the ACCC.
But the framework has a long runway before its penalties apply. Regulated entities must join the external dispute resolution scheme, AFCA, from 1 September 2026. The framework’s full prevent-detect-disrupt-report-respond obligations, with AFCA handling scam complaints, take full effect from 31 March 2027.
Once fully live, the penalties aren’t small: up to $50 million, or 30 percent of turnover, for failing to prevent, detect, disrupt or respond to a scam running on a platform’s own service; up to $10 million for governance and reporting failures.
Some legal commentary describes a lighter “reasonable steps” obligation applying from as early as 1 July 2026, ahead of the formal AFCA and enforcement dates. Sources vary on the exact sequencing here, which is flagged in this issue’s claim ledger as the main area of date uncertainty.
Put the two tracks side by side. Losses tied to fake celebrity endorsements: $7.4 million and rising, this year. Enforceable consequences for the platforms actually hosting the ads: not yet, and not for at least another seven months. Banks answer to a court today. Platforms get a runway that extends into next autumn.
None of this makes the framework a bad idea — a $50 million penalty is real leverage, once it’s live. It does mean there’s a window, right now, where the fastest-growing version of this scam has almost nobody legally on the hook for hosting it, and that window closes on the platforms’ timeline, not on anyone else’s.
So what do you do with this
If an investment ad features a familiar face — a business figure, a politician, an economist — treat the face as a reason for suspicion, not reassurance. Don’t Google the platform’s name; these sites are built to survive exactly that check. Instead, search the actual company on ASIC’s Australian Financial Services licence register, which is free and public. If it’s not listed, nothing else about the ad matters.
If you’ve already sent money, go to your bank first, not the platform. The HSBC case shows your bank owes you a properly-run investigation right now, under rules that already exist and already have a court willing to enforce them.
Report the ad to the platform too, but don’t expect that report to carry any legal weight on their end just yet. That only changes once the framework is fully live.
Top picks
SmartCompany — “The top 11 Australian public figures most impersonated in investment scams” — the fullest public rundown of who’s being used as bait and the National Anti-Scam Centre figures behind it.
ASIC media release 26-127MR — Federal Court orders $35 million penalty against HSBC — the primary source on the bank-side penalty referenced throughout this issue.
ACCC — Scams Prevention Framework — the regulator’s own explainer of sector designations and compliance dates, the primary source for this issue’s timeline claims.
ASIC media release 26-162MR — record $830 million in civil penalties and $644 million returned in 2025–26 — the source for this issue’s enforcement-year digest item.
ASIC media release 26-185MR — ASIC protects consumers by removing high-risk financial sector participants — the source for the 10 August bannings, including the Shield and First Guardian references.
Netcraft — “Australia’s Scams Prevention Framework: what banks must do before March 2027” — a clear industry breakdown of the framework’s phased obligations and penalty tiers.
Reported today, and worth watching closely as the framework’s dates approach.
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