Noel Whittaker on the investment scams catching careful, intelligent people — and the unglamorous rules that stop almost all of them.
Most of us quietly believe we'd spot a scam. Noel Whittaker's latest column for YourLifeChoices makes the uncomfortable case that this confidence is exactly what scammers rely on. He points to reported figures of 91,767 scams in Australia in the first half of 2026, with $156.6 million stolen — and notes that most of that money is never recovered.
What has changed is the polish. The old giveaways — clumsy grammar, odd email addresses, obvious urgency — have largely gone. Investment scams now arrive as professional-looking advertisements on social media, frequently using the faces and names of well-known Australians who have nothing to do with them. Noel points to Andrew Forrest's long-running fight with Meta over fraudulent ads using his name, and the long list of other prominent Australians whose images have been taken for the same purpose.
The second change is patience. Many scams now build a relationship over weeks or months before money is ever mentioned. By the time an "opportunity" is raised, it doesn't feel like a cold approach at all. It feels like a tip from someone you know.
"The scammers don't need to fool everybody all the time—they just need to fool you once."
His practical advice is refreshingly ordinary: never invest on the strength of a social media advertisement or a celebrity endorsement, never transfer money on a stranger's instruction no matter how long you have been talking to them, and treat urgency itself as the warning sign rather than the reason to hurry. If an opportunity is genuine, it will still be there tomorrow. And if a story sounds plausible, check it by contacting the organisation directly — using a number you found yourself, not one you were given.
If you are in your 40s or 50s with a decent super balance and some savings outside it, this matters more than it did twenty years ago. You are now, in a scammer's eyes, worth the effort.
Read the full article: Think you'd never fall for an investment scam? — Noel Whittaker, YourLifeChoices, 7 September 2026.
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