The fake police scam stealing millions from Australia's Chinese community

Experts are sounding the alarm on a frightening scam fleecing millions of dollars from the Chinese community. (ABC News: Richard Sydenham)

A man dressed in a shirt and tie prepares to record a statement he believes will be used in court.

In his bedroom, he presses record, bows to the camera as a sign of respect and addresses the judge who will decide his fate.

Justin was told that the allegations would prevent him from entering and exiting China. (ABC News: RIchard Sydenham)

Everything he has been accused of is "fabricated, unfounded and unrealistic", he tells the camera.

Justin (whose full name has been withheld to protect his identity) was born in China and believed he had been accused of international money laundering and was being investigated by Chinese authorities.

He was trying to prove his innocence but would soon discover there was no police investigation, and the people he was talking with were sophisticated criminals impersonating Chinese law enforcement and were about to rob him of nearly all his life savings.

In 2025, more than $12 million was lost to Chinese authority scams in Australia, according to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC), which received 1,294 reports of the scam through Scamwatch.

ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said of all the scams targeting multicultural communities in Australia, authority scams targeting the Chinese community had the highest losses.

The median loss reported to Scamwatch for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) consumers was $750, Ms Lowe said.

But the median loss for Chinese authority scams was $55,000.

Catriona Lowe says the sophistication of authority scams has increased. (ABC News: Patrick Stone)

Ms Lowe said the ACCC had been receiving reports about the scam for a number of years and had seen "a rise in its sophistication".

Victims had reported that documentation presented and methods used by the scammers was "highly convincing", Ms Lowe said.

"We hear reports of credible transfers between police departments, for example, that just mimic what in fact these institutions [do], how they operate," she said.

Stephanie Tonkin says the Scam Prevention Framework is "sitting on a shelf". (ABC News: Simon Tucci)

Consumer Action Law Centre chief executive Stephanie Tonkin said scams were now "industrialised".

She said scammers were investing time and money in grooming their victims and in some cases were using fear of deportation or reprisal to defraud victims of huge sums of money.

"[It's] a really complicated psychological scam that is putting people in situation