Scam prevention often begins after a fraud attempt has reached a customer. Apate.ai is trying to move that work earlier: its AI agents pose as potential victims, engage suspected scammers, and gather details that organizations can use to strengthen their response.
Keeping scammers engaged
Founded in 2024 from research at Macquarie University in Sydney, the Australian startup deploys thousands of agents across calls, messages, email, and the web. They can answer scam calls, follow phishing links, reply to suspicious messages, and enter social media groups where fraud may be taking place.
The agents adopt fabricated identities, varying their ages, genders, accents, and languages. Their aim is to hold a fraudster’s attention long enough to learn about the scheme and the people or infrastructure behind it.
Apate says its agents have consumed 17 years of scammers’ time over 2.5 million conversations. The company’s larger goal is to gather information that might otherwise surface only after someone has been defrauded. That can include bank accounts, crypto wallets, phone numbers, malicious websites, and the brands being impersonated.
From scam-baiting to research
The idea began with a scam call to founder and CEO Dali Kaafar. At a family picnic, he recognized an unknown caller as a scammer and kept the person talking for 44 minutes, playing along for the amusement of his children.
Afterward, Kaafar considered that the caller had spent that time away from potential victims. He also wondered whether the tactic could be automated and used to learn more about scams. The question led to research at Macquarie University, where Kaafar and colleagues used machine learning and natural language processing to examine scam calls and develop better ways to detect and prevent fraud.
Apate’s approach builds on the familiar practice of scam-baiting, in which people deliberately keep fraudsters occupied. The company applies that idea at a larger scale, using AI agents to gather information from conversations rather than relying on an individual to handle each interaction.
How customers use the intelligence
Apate provides customers with access to its agents and an insights portal containing scam intelligence and analytics. Customers can examine activity aimed at their end users, employees, brands, or products. They can also give agents specific tasks, such as finding a bank account number or a crypto-wallet address.
Text agents can look for suspected scam activity in forums, investment groups, and social platforms. They may then join a conversation using a fabricated identity to try to uncover details about the people running the operation.
The company says it combines frontier models with its own fine-tuned models. Training draws on conversations between its agents and scammers, as well as Kaafar’s research at Macquarie. The collected information is intended to give customers material they can use in their anti-fraud measures and initiatives.
Apate’s customers include Commonwealth Bank of Australia and TPG Telecom, along with other utilities, telecom companies, and government agencies. The company says TPG has diverted nearly 590,000 calls to its agents. It also reports that Commonwealth has seen a 76% drop in publicly reported scam losses, and that an unnamed Australian bank used its outbound agents to disrupt 22 scam campaigns.
Expansion and the limits of prevention
Apate’s pitch is that gathering information directly from scammers can help customers act before a victim is harmed. That approach sits alongside existing defenses: the company’s co-founder and chief commercial officer, Brad Joffe, described phone-number blocking and transaction monitoring as measures that can come into play after scammers have already made contact or moved on to new numbers.
The need for fraud intelligence is underscored by the figures cited in the article: the FBI received more than 22,000 complaints of AI-related crimes in 2025, resulting in about $893 million in losses. More than $632 million came from investment scams, where the FBI says fraudsters use AI to manage conversations and deepfake celebrities, executives, and other trusted figures.
Apate raised $8.15 million in seed funding in August from Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures, and Baobab Ventures. Joffe said the 20-person company has raised just under $10 million in total. It plans to use the latest round for product development and international expansion, including opening an office in London and building a larger presence in the U.S.
Apate was named after the Greek goddess of deception, a reference to the role its agents play. The startup also treats scammers’ frustration as a signal: Joffe said the company celebrates when people swear at its bots. For Apate, keeping a fraudster engaged can produce both wasted time for the scammer and information customers can use to respond.