To make matters worse, the GOP tax scam causes enormous deficits that will trigger major cuts to Medicare: $25 billion in the next year and $400 billion in the next ten years.
Dating and romance scams caused the greatest monetary loss among Indigenous consumers, totalling more than $613,000.
The "highly organised, large scale" scam could have caused "catastrophic damage" to the public as fake Viagra has in the past been found to contain acid, brick dust and road paint, Judge Charles Wide QC told the Old Bailey as he sentenced the gang.
For developers, the scams can cause big headaches, eating up resources and damaging their reputations.
There are also increased attacks via Google's Android phones including scams that cause people to rack up phone bills with dubious services and attacks that disclose users' geolocation to a third party.
Hard times often expose wrongdoing by causing scams to collapse.
Alex Neill, managing director of Which? home & legal services, said: "The regulator has finally acknowledged the considerable consumer harm caused by bank transfer scams.
A little bit of research upfront can save years of tears and frustration caused by losses in scams.
Inheritance scams and computer and prediction software also caused significant losses among Indigenous people.
