Apate deploys undercover AI agents to fall victim to scams so they can collect fraud intelligence

Meta description: Apate.ai deploys thousands of AI agents to bait scammers, logging 2.5 million conversations and 17 years of wasted fraudster time. The Australian startup raised $8.15 million in seed funding.

Tags: Apate.ai, AI agents, scam baiting, fraud prevention, cybersecurity

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Most companies deploy AI agents to accelerate product development or streamline workflows. Apate.ai sends them undercover to get scammed instead.

The Australian startup, founded in 2024 on research conducted at Macquarie University in Sydney, operates thousands of AI agents that pose as vulnerable targets. These agents answer scam calls, reply to suspicious messages and emails, click phishing links, and infiltrate social media groups to lure fraudsters. They adopt various personas—different ages, genders, accents, and languages—attempting to keep scammers engaged long enough to extract useful intelligence.

From Family Picnic to Fraud-Fighting Fleet

The concept behind Apate emerged from an actual scam call. Several years ago, founder and CEO Dali Kaafar received a call from an unknown number during a family picnic. Recognizing it as a scam, he pretended to be confused for his children's amusement and stretched the conversation to 44 minutes.

Everyone laughed, but Kaafar realized those 44 minutes represented time the scammer wasn't targeting a real victim. It was also 44 minutes of his own wasted time—prompting him to consider whether the process could be automated while gathering useful information.

That question led to research at Macquarie University, where Kaafar and colleagues applied machine learning and natural language processing to analyze scam call content and develop improved detection and prevention methods.

"Most of the industry works after the fact. Telcos block numbers, but scammers just get new ones. Banks watch transactions, but by then the scammer has already reached the customer. We go to the scammer directly and get the information before anyone gets hurt," Brad Joffe, co-founder and chief commercial officer, told TechCrunch. "Our AI agents talk to tens of thousands of scammers every day across calls, messages, email, and the web. What we offer our customers is what comes out of those conversations, and what they can do with it."

How the Agent Network Operates

Apate combines frontier models with its own fine-tuned models to power its agents and analysis. Training data includes conversations its agents have conducted with scammers, supplemented by Kaafar's Macquarie research.

The company reports its fleet has wasted 17 years of scammers' time across 2.5 million conversations. For Apate's customers—banks, telecom companies, government agencies, and utilities—the more critical output is intelligence that typically only surfaces after a victim has been defrauded: bank accounts, crypto wallets, phone numbers, malicious websites, impersonated brands, and operational details of active scams.

Customers access an insights portal providing intelligence and analytics on scams targeting their end users or employees, brands, and products. They can assign agents specific missions, such as obtaining a bank account number or crypto-wallet address. Text agents search forums, investment groups, and social platforms for potential scam activity, then enter conversations with fabricated identities to surface scammers' details.

Apate's customer roster includes Commonwealth Bank of Australia, TPG Telecom, and other utilities, telcos, and government agencies. According to Joffe, TPG has diverted nearly 590,000 calls to Apate's agents. Commonwealth Bank has recorded a 76% drop in publicly reported scam losses. An unnamed Australian bank has used Apate's outbound agents to disrupt 22 scam campaigns.

The Growing AI Fraud Problem

The timing reflects an escalating threat landscape. The FBI received more than 22,000 complaints of AI-related crimes in 2025, resulting in approximately $893 million in losses. Over $632 million of that total came from investment scams, where the FBI says fraudsters use AI to conduct conversations and create deepfakes of celebrities, executives, and trusted figures.

Scam baiting itself is not new. People have long strung scammers along for entertainment—getting them to read entire books aloud or even obtain ridiculous tattoos. But AI capability is shifting the dynamics, enabling automated, scalable engagement that humans cannot sustain.

Funding and Expansion Plans

Investors see commercial potential in turning the tables on fraudsters. 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 total and plans to use the latest round for product development and international expansion, including opening a London office and building a larger U.S. presence.

The company name references the Greek goddess of deception—an apt choice given its agents' function. Apate even features scammers swearing at its bots in pitch materials.

"We track that as a sign of frustration and every swear word gets celebrated by us at Apate. We are probably one of the only businesses in the world that celebrates when people swear at our product," Joffe said.

Apate is one of the finalists at this year's Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco through Thursday, October 15. The company will pitch a panel of venture capital judges at the event.

The startup occupies an unusual position: using the same AI technologies that empower fraudsters as a defensive weapon against them. Whether this approach scales into a sustainable business depends on maintaining intelligence quality, expanding customer adoption beyond early partners, and staying ahead of scammers who may eventually learn to detect and evade automated baiting.