Inside Australia’s $200 Million Psychic Scam: How a Mother–Daughter Syndicate Manipulated Victims and Laundered Millions
1. Introduction of the Scam
In one of Australia’s most astonishing financial crime cases, police arrested a mother and daughter in November 2025 for allegedly running a two hundred million dollar fraud and money laundering syndicate. Their cover was neither a shell company nor a darknet marketplace. They presented themselves as psychics who claimed the ability to foresee danger, heal emotional wounds, and remove spiritual threats that supposedly plagued their clients.
The case captured national attention because it combined two worlds that rarely collide at this scale. Deep emotional manipulation and sophisticated financial laundering. What seemed like harmless spiritual readings turned into a highly profitable criminal enterprise that operated quietly for years.
The scam is a stark reminder that fraud is evolving beyond impersonation calls and fake investment pitches. Criminals are finding new ways to step into the most vulnerable parts of people’s lives. Understanding this case helps financial institutions identify similar behavioural and transactional signals before they escalate into million dollar losses.

2. Anatomy of the Scam
Behind the illusion of psychic counselling was a methodical, multi layered fraud structure designed to extract wealth while maintaining unquestioned authority over victims.
A. Establishing Irresistible Authority
The syndicate created an aura of mystique. They styled themselves as spiritual guides with special insight into personal tragedies, relationship breakdowns, and looming dangers. This emotional framing created an asymmetric relationship. The victims were the ones seeking answers. The scammers were the ones providing them.
B. Cultivating Dependence Over Time
Victims did not transfer large sums immediately. The scammers first built trust through frequent sessions, emotional reinforcement, and manufactured “predictions” that aligned with the victims’ fears or desires. Once trust solidified, dependence followed. Victims began to rely on the scammers’ counsel for major life decisions.
C. Escalating Financial Requests Under Emotional Pressure
As dependence grew, payments escalated. Victims were told that removing a curse or healing an emotional blockage required progressively higher financial sacrifices. Some were convinced that failing to comply would bring harm to themselves or loved ones. Fear became the payment accelerator.
D. Operating as a Structured Syndicate
Although the mother and daughter fronted the scheme, police uncovered several associates who helped receive funds, manage assets, and distance the organisers from the flow of money. This structure mirrored the operational models of organised fraud groups.
E. Exploiting the Legitimacy of “Services”
The payments appeared as consulting or spiritual services, which are common and often unregulated. This gave the syndicate a major advantage. Bank transfers looked legitimate. Transaction descriptions were valid. And the activity closely resembled the profiles of other small service providers.
This blending of emotional exploitation and professional disguise is what made the scam extraordinarily effective.
3. Why Victims Fell for It: The Psychology at Play
People often believe financial crime succeeds because victims are careless. This case shows the opposite. The victims were targeted precisely because they were thoughtful, concerned, and searching for help.
A. Authority and Expertise Bias
When someone is positioned as an expert, whether a doctor, advisor, or psychic, their guidance feels credible. Victims trusted the scammers’ “diagnosis” because it appeared grounded in unique insight.
B. Emotional Vulnerability
Many victims were dealing with grief, loneliness, uncertainty, or family conflict. These emotional states are fertile ground for manipulation. Scammers do not need access to bank accounts when they already have access to the human heart.
C. The Illusion of Personal Connection
Fraudsters used personalised predictions and tailored spiritual advice. This created a bond that felt intimate and unique. When a victim feels “understood,” their defences lower.
D. Fear Based Decision Making
Warnings like “your family is at risk unless you act now” are extremely powerful. Under fear, rationality is overshadowed by urgency.
E. The Sunk Cost Trap
Once a victim has invested a significant amount, they continue paying to “finish the process” rather than admit the entire relationship was fraudulent.
Understanding these psychological drivers is essential. They are increasingly common across romance scams, deepfake impersonations, sham consultant schemes, and spiritual frauds across APAC.
4. The Laundering Playbook Behind the Scam
Once the scammers extracted money, the operation transitioned into a textbook laundering scheme designed to conceal the origin of illicit funds and distance the perpetrators from the victims.
A. Multi Layered Account Structures
Money flowed through personal accounts, associates’ accounts, and small businesses that provided cover for irregular inflows. This layering reduced traceability.
B. Conversion Into High Value Assets
Luxury goods, vehicles, property, and jewellery were used to convert liquid funds into stable, movable wealth. These assets can be held long term or liquidated in smaller increments to avoid detection.
C. Cross Jurisdiction Fund Movement
Authorities suspect that portions of the money were transferred offshore. Cross border movements complicate the investigative trail and exploit discrepancies between regulatory frameworks.
D. Cash Based Structuring
Victims were sometimes encouraged to withdraw cash, buy gold, or convert savings into prepaid instruments. These activities create gaps in the financial record that help obscure illicit origins.
E. Service Based Laundering Through Fake Invoices
The scammers reportedly issued or referenced “healing services,” “spiritual cleansing,” and similar descriptions. Because these services are intangible, verifying their legitimacy is difficult.
The laundering strategy was not unusual. What made it hard to detect was its intimate connection to a long term emotional scam.
5. Red Flags for FIs
Financial institutions can detect the early signals of scams like this through behavioural and transactional monitoring.
Key Transaction Red Flags
- Repeated high value transfers to individuals claiming to provide advisory or spiritual services.
- Elderly or vulnerable customers making sudden, unexplained payments to unfamiliar parties.
- Transfers that increase in value and frequency over weeks or months.
- Sudden depletion of retirement accounts or long held savings.
- Immediate onward transfers from the recipient to offshore banks.
- Significant cash withdrawals following online advisory sessions.
- Purchases of gold, jewellery, or luxury goods inconsistent with customer profiles.
Key Behavioural Red Flags
- Customers showing visible distress or referencing “urgent help” required by an adviser.
- Hesitation or refusal to explain the purpose of a transaction.
- Uncharacteristic secrecy regarding financial decisions.
- Statements referencing curses, spiritual threats, or emotional manipulation.
KYC and Profile Level Red Flags
- Service providers with no registered business presence.
- Mismatch between declared income and transaction activity.
- Shared addresses or accounts among individuals connected to the same adviser.
Financial institutions that identify these early signals can prevent significant losses and support customers before the harm intensifies.

6. How Tookitaki Strengthens Defences
Modern financial crime is increasingly psychological, personalised, and disguised behind legitimate looking service payments. Tookitaki equips institutions with the intelligence and technology to identify these patterns early.
A. Behavioural Analytics Trained on Real World Scenarios
FinCense analyses changes in spending, emotional distress indicators, unusual advisory payments, and deviations from customer norms. These subtle behavioural cues often precede standard red flags.
B. Collective Intelligence Through the AFC Ecosystem
Compliance experts across Asia Pacific contribute emerging fraud scenarios, including social engineering, spiritual scams, and coercion based typologies. Financial institutions benefit from insights grounded in real world criminal activity, not static rules.
C. Dynamic Detection Models for Service Based Laundering
FinCense distinguishes between ordinary professional service payments and laundering masked as consulting or spiritual fees. This is essential for cases where invoice based laundering is the primary disguise.
D. Automated Threshold Optimisation and Simulation
Institutions can simulate how new scam scenarios would trigger alerts and generate thresholds that adapt to the bank’s customer base. This reduces false positives while improving sensitivity.
E. Early Intervention for Vulnerable Customers
FinCense helps identify elderly or high risk individuals who show sudden behavioural changes. Banks can trigger outreach before the customer falls deeper into manipulation.
F. Investigator Support Through FinMate
With FinMate, compliance teams receive contextual insights, pattern explanations, and recommended investigative paths. This accelerates understanding and action on complex scam patterns.
Together, these capabilities form a proactive defence system that protects victims and reinforces institutional trust.
7. Conclusion
The two hundred million dollar psychic scam is more than a headline. It is a lesson in how deeply fraud can infiltrate personal lives and how effectively criminals can disguise illicit flows behind emotional manipulation. It is also a warning that traditional monitoring systems, which rely on transactional patterns alone, may miss the early behavioural signals that reveal the true nature of emerging scams.
For financial institutions, two capabilities are becoming non negotiable.
- Understanding the human psychology behind financial crime.
- Using intelligent, adaptive systems that can detect the behavioural and transactional interplay.
Tookitaki helps institutions meet both challenges. Through FinCense and the AFC Ecosystem, institutions benefit from collective intelligence, adaptive detection, and technology designed to understand the complexity of modern fraud.
As scams continue to evolve, so must defences. Building stronger systems today protects customers, prevents loss, and strengthens trust across the financial ecosystem.
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