Australian Firm Deploys 197,000 AI Personas to Waste Scammers' Time
Apate uses a massive fleet of AI-driven 'victims' to disrupt fraud economics and gather intelligence on criminal networks.
Australian tech firm Apate has deployed approximately 197,000 AI-driven personas designed to act as gullible victims to waste the time of online fraudsters. The operation represents a strategic shift toward "defensive AI," turning the scammers' own scaling tactics against them.
Each persona is equipped with distinct vocal tics, accents, and realistic human behaviors to maintain the illusion of a real target. These bots engage fraudsters across phone calls, social media, and messaging platforms including WhatsApp and Telegram. In a six-week period ending in 2025, Apate's bots conducted 600,000 scam calls on behalf of the Australian telecommunications provider TPG. According to the company, this engagement wasted over 500 days of scammers' time and saved approximately $13 million.
The Origin of Defensive AI
The project was conceived by founder Dali Kaafar, a former professor at Macquarie University. The idea took root in 2021 after Kaafar spent 44 minutes manually scam-baiting a fraudster during a family picnic. Reflecting on the experience, Kaafar noted that if he could achieve those results for fun, the potential for technology to do so at scale was immense. This realization led to the development of an automated system capable of wasting fraudster resources while simultaneously gathering data. Apate was subsequently spun off from Macquarie University in 2023, supported by funding from the Office of National Intelligence.
Disrupting the Fraud Economy
By automating the role of the victim, Apate disrupts the fundamental economics of scamming. Most fraud operations rely on human labor to close deals and extract money; by forcing these humans to spend hours interacting with bots, the cost of operation for the criminal ring increases while the success rate plummets.
Beyond mere disruption, the bots serve as intelligence gatherers. They are used to extract actionable data on scam rings, including crypto wallet addresses and bank account details. This intelligence is then provided to financial institutions and telcos to help them identify and block criminal infrastructure before significant financial damage occurs. The company has already expanded its reach, partnering with major banks across Australia, the UK, South Africa, and Southeast Asia.
The Future of Scam Mitigation
As criminal organizations increasingly adopt AI to scale their own operations, the battle is shifting toward a war of attrition between competing algorithms. The success of the TPG pilot suggests that high-volume, AI-driven baiting can provide a measurable return on investment for infrastructure providers. Moving forward, the industry will be watching whether this defensive approach can keep pace with the evolving sophistication of fraud rings and whether other global financial hubs adopt similar automated countermeasures to protect their users.