Australians who treat a quick Google search as due diligence on an investment pitch are running into a wall of machine-made credibility, the corporate regulator warned Monday as it refreshed its guidance on AI-assisted impersonation scams. In media release 26-195MR, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said scammers are chaining deepfake videos, synthetic news articles, forged reviews and look-alike websites so that ordinary search results can look like independent validation—even when every layer is fake.
Chair Sarah Court said AI is making investment fraud “more convincing and harder to detect,” and that polished branding or testimonials are not evidence that an offer is licensed or safe. The warning lands as ASIC reports it removed more than 19,400 scam touchpoints in the 2025–26 financial year, up 182 per cent on the prior year, including 7,051 fake investment platforms.
Why search results are no longer neutral
Historically, a suspicious investor could triangulate: check ASIC’s Professional Registers, read mainstream coverage, and look for inconsistencies in a promoter’s story. ASIC’s current guidance describes a different funnel. Social ads featuring deepfaked celebrities or politicians send victims to fabricated news sites that mimic national outlets, then on to trading dashboards that harvest deposits. Generative tools let criminals spin those pages quickly, so the same scam network can occupy multiple URLs while search indexes catch up.
Reports to Scamwatch linked to eleven public figures ASIC named as most impersonated in FY26—including the Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader, two sitting senators and broadcaster Alan Kohler—are associated with $7.4 million in losses, the regulator said. None of those people endorsed the schemes; the videos are synthetic. Moneysmart’s public explainer walks through a fictitious victim journey: a social ad, a fake news story, glowing user reviews, and a dashboard that never returns withdrawals—each layer designed to survive a casual search.
What ASIC says to verify
ASIC still tells consumers to confirm an Australian Financial Services licence, but it stresses that step is necessary, not sufficient. Scammers reuse real licence numbers, impersonate licensed firms, or display credentials that do not match the business name on the website. The regulator advises matching the licence holder’s legal name and number on ASIC’s registers to the entity asking for money, and cross-checking suspicious firms against Moneysmart’s Investor Alert List.
Commissioners have also urged scepticism toward urgent calls to act, crypto-only payment rails, and “account managers” who discourage contact with a licensed adviser. Where a promoter cannot explain how returns are generated—or insists verification must happen only through their portal—ASIC treats that as a red flag.
Enforcement load
ASIC coordinates takedowns with external cyber disruption partners and reports monitoring social advertisements around the clock. Even at record removal rates, Chair Court told ABC News that some victims can scrutinise a site carefully and still fail to spot a fake, because the scam’s surface mimics legitimate finance marketing.
For security teams inside banks and super funds, the release is a reminder that customer education must move beyond “search the company name.” Fraud analysts say the defensive shift is toward outbound warnings when customers send funds to newly registered payment endpoints, and toward media literacy that treats video endorsements as untrusted until verified through independent channels.
What remains unknown
ASIC did not break out how many FY26 takedowns involved generative AI versus older phishing kits, and it has not published success rates for recovering transferred funds. Consumer groups want telcos and search platforms to share more metadata on ad buyers, but Monday’s release focused on investor behaviour rather than new industry mandates.
The regulator’s immediate ask is procedural: treat search placement and star ratings as attacker-controlled, and anchor trust only in register entries you verify yourself—not in what ranks first on the page. If an opportunity cannot be verified through ASIC’s registers and a licensed professional willing to put their name on advice, ASIC’s message is to walk away, no matter how familiar the face in the thumbnail looks.
