Australia has two national reporting routes and they are not interchangeable. One collects intelligence and disrupts scams at scale. The other is the actual police report. Most people file the first, assume they have done the second, and wonder why nothing happens.
Your bank first, and immediately
Nothing else on this page can move money. Call your bank the moment you realise, on the number on your card or in the app. Ask them to stop or recall the payment and to put a freeze on the account if your details are exposed.
Be aware of what Australian law currently does and does not give you. The Scams Prevention Framework became law in 2025, but the obligations it places on banks, telcos and digital platforms mostly start on 31 March 2027, and the industry codes are still being drafted. Until then there is no general right to a refund for a payment you were tricked into authorising. Banks can and do refund case by case; they are not yet required to.
Scamwatch records it. It cannot answer you
The National Anti-Scam Centre runs Scamwatch at scamwatch.gov.au. Report there, because the aggregate is what drives disruption: with your consent the centre works with platforms and providers to get scam websites, ads and contact details taken down.
But read what the form itself says. “We can’t respond to reports made through this form.” And: “This is not an official police report.” Scamwatch will not investigate your case, contact you, or recover your money. It is a national sensor, and you are one of its readings.
ReportCyber is the police report
For the actual crime report, go to cyber.gov.au/report-and-recover/report. ReportCyber routes your report to the police in your state or territory, and gives you a reference number you can use with your bank and your insurer. An investigation is not guaranteed; a record that can be matched with other reports is.
If a scammer is impersonating an Australian business rather than defrauding you directly, the relevant body is your state or territory fair trading office, not the federal regulator.
IDCARE, when it is your identity rather than your money
IDCARE is a free national service on 1800 595 160 that builds you a personal response plan: which documents to replace, in what order, and who to tell. If a scammer has your licence number, passport details or Medicare number, that plan is worth more than another report. IDCARE also covers New Zealand, on a different number.
If your complaint is really about how your bank handled things, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority is the escalation route once the bank’s own process is done.
Texts and calls
Australia has no national SMS short code for forwarding scam texts. If you have seen 7726 recommended, that is the UK and Canadian code and it does not apply here. Report the message to Scamwatch, report it in your phone’s messaging app, and block the number.
Impersonation of government services has its own direct lines, which are worth using because they can check whether a call was real: Services Australia and myGov on 1800 941 126, and the Tax Office on 1800 008 540.
What none of them do
None of these takes a scam page offline by itself. The page is served by a hosting provider under a domain name sold by a registrar, and those two companies can remove it within hours of a clear abuse report. That report is yours to send, and it is usually the fastest result available anywhere.
Expect to be targeted again
Scamwatch’s own figure: one in three people who are scammed are scammed more than once. The follow-up is usually someone offering to recover the money you lost, for a fee, sometimes claiming to be from a government agency. There is no such service, and no Australian agency charges to return your money.