Apate Deploys AI Agents to Bait and Outsmart Fraudsters

Founded in 2024 following research at Sydney’s Macquarie University, Apate operates a fleet that has already consumed 17 years of scammers’ time across 2.5 million interactions. CEO Dali Kaafar conceived the model after a personal 44-minute call with a fraudster, realizing that automated engagement could prevent victimization while gathering actionable data. The agents adopt diverse personas, genders, and languages to keep criminals talking, eventually extracting bank account details, crypto-wallet addresses, and malicious infrastructure information.

This intelligence is fed to clients, including Commonwealth Bank of Australia and TPG Telecom, to preemptively block threats. The impact is measurable: Commonwealth reported a 76% reduction in publicly stated scam losses, while TPG diverted nearly 590,000 calls to the startup's defensive network. Co-founder Brad Joffe notes that the company even tracks scammer frustration through incoming vitriol, treating every instance of abuse as a performance metric. With $8.15 million in recent seed funding, the 20-person firm is now targeting international expansion, including a new presence in London and the United States, to combat the rising tide of AI-driven financial crime.