Australia has become the world's honeypot for scammers, with latest figures showing Aussies had $2.7 billion stolen from them in one year alone.

A news.com.au special investigation has found in most cases the scammers could have been stopped.

The federal government's proposed Scam Prevention Framework does not go far enough.

Scam victims will remain out of pocket and unprotected and in many cases left devastated.

What victims say:

“I’ve been given a limited time to live and that money would help (my family) to keep running this house. So it broke my heart.”  - Danny McIver, who had $70,000 stolen

“The banks have had all the power and we are a mum and dad business – we are self employed - and it takes a lot of effort and toilets to clean and beds to make up $7000.” - Small business owners Matt and Ellen McKell

“I am working a second job now. I had savings and I’m now in debt.” Tanya Owens, whose life savings were stolen

“Now, if there’d been a bank error and they had accidentally sent me a whole lot of their money, they would be on to me pretty damn quick to get that money back.” - Dean Cropp who was defrauded out of $42,000

“I could not stop crying. It’s literally blood money. It just makes me absolutely sick.” - Andrea Smith, about scammers stealing $300,000 from her dead brother’s life insurance payout  

The solution:

Today, news.com.au is launching People Before Profit, calling on the federal government to make it mandatory for banks to compensate scam victims - just like in the UK.

In October last year, the UK introduced world leading legislation making compensation mandatory for scam victims within five business days unless in cases of gross negligence. 

How you can help:

It's time Australian banks put People Before Profit. Sign the petition to show your support.

 

PLEASE NOTE: News.com.au is not asking you to donate money to this campaign.
Change.org offers the opportunity to donate money to help promote petitions hosted on their site.
News.com.au is committed to driving positive change on issues that matter to Australians, and we want to show that the community supports our causes through signatures.
This is a petition, not a fundraiser.
We appreciate and thank everyone who has donated, but news.com.au is in no way asking you to donate and is not receiving any funds from change.org from this campaign.

News.com.au Privacy Notice
If you decide to sign this petition, and you don't want your support to be made public on this website, then you should untick the box before you click on "Sign this petition".  You may still receive marketing and other messages from Change.org in accordance with their terms of use and their privacy policy. Regardless of whether or not that box is ticked, the details you provide when you sign the petition will be provided to a small team at news.com.au who will only use that information in relation to the petition including providing it to government and other relevant decision makers, analysing and aggregating the results and promoting the petition and its results. News will not use data about individual signatories for editorial purposes or to contact you for marketing purposes, whether about this petition or otherwise. This statement overrides any contrary statements made in our Privacy Policy which you can access here: https://preferences.news.com.au/privacy and which sets out, among other things, how you can contact us with any concerns about our compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles.