Undercover Agents vs Scammers – Dali Kaafar

Scammers are a global epidemic and most of us feel powerless against them. The good news is that our guest this week has built the tech, and a company, to fight back.

Dali Kaafar is the founder and CEO of Apate, a counter-intelligence company that deploys conversational AI to fight scammers at scale. Dali is also a Professor of Cybersecurity at Macquarie University and the Executive Director of its Cyber Security Hub. In 2025 he was named AI Academic/Researcher of the Year at the Australian AI Awards, and has been recognised as one of The Australian’s Top 100 Innovators two years running.

The scale of scammers is staggering: scam losses are doubling year on year. Globally, people are losing hundreds of billions of dollars annually and it’s getting worse, not better. 

Incredibly, when a scammer gets you on the phone, they have a one in five chance of succeeding!

In this fascinating conversation you’ll hear:

• How Apate’s undercover AI agents engage and frustrate scammer networks
• The real-time intelligence Apate’s agents extract directly from scammers working across phone, text and Whats App channels to name a few
• How scam operations are exploding with thousands of new WhatsApp groups appearing daily in many countries, and
• Why Apate has perhaps one of the most unusual KPIs we’ve ever come across. 

We’ve all been on the receiving end of scam attempts so, if you’re anything like us, you’ll be very glad to hear about the  innovative ways Dali and his team are setting out to protect us. 

Enjoy this episode with the innovative and pioneering Dali Kaafar.

 

 

Links

Apate website 

Professor Dali Kaafar on LinkedIn