More than 1000 Australian kids were scammed in 2024. Mum’s game ‘Dodgy or Not?’ hopes to slash that number

More than 1000 Australians aged under 18 fell victim to scams in 2024 alone, according to Scamwatch data.

These kids lost a combined $236,000 – and that’s not the only thing scammers have stolen from our youngest generation.

Aussie kids are spending more time online than any generation before them and, like Aussie adults, they’re regularly targeted by scammers hoping to trick them out of cash, personal details, and worse.

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More than 270 under-18s have reported being scammed in 2025 totalling more than $47,000 in lost cash, per Scamwatch.

And those statistics are only going to get worse as online scams become more sophisticated.

That’s where single mum, social scientist and entrepreneur Stacey Edmonds’ game ‘Dodgy or Not?’ comes in.

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Originally developed as a corporate cyber safety tool used by businesses to train adult staff on how to identify scams, Edmonds realised the game had so much more potential when her 10- and 17-year-old sons took an interest in it last year.

“They started taking my phone to play the conveyancer’s [version of the] game,” Edmonds told 9honey.

“It occurred to me, we all have to learn. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what demographic … so I thought, ‘what if we made a kids version?'”

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The idea was to take the existing tool – which used AI to generate texts, emails and other content based on real scams found on the dark web and tasked users with identifying the ‘dodgy’ ones – and create a new version tailored to school-aged children.

As well as helping them identify scams, it would also teach them how to spot grooming behaviour online.

”There’s a 117-page comprehensive guide to sextortion just on the dark web,” Edmonds revealed.

“It teaches you how to sextort children. I wanted to vomit.”

The only thing holding her back from creating a version of ‘Dodgy or Not?’ just for kids was money.

”There’s no spare cash, especially at the minute because we’ve all spent our savings on the cost of living,” the single mum said.

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More than 70 per cent of female business owners believe it’s harder for women to access funding compared to men and only one per cent of female founders are able to access private funding for their businesses, according to Westpac research.

The bank established its $500 million female entrepreneurs fund in 2023 to level the playing field and today announced the fund has been expanded by another $500 million to $1 billion.

Since its inception, the fund has supported 1155 women – including Edmonds – in starting or scaling-up their business.

“We’ve actually funded everything from a hairdresser, to a tattoo artist, to someone starting own FinTech company,” Tamara Bryden, Westpac Managing Director, Business Lending, told 9honey.

One thing that unites most female-founded businesses is that they’re making an important social impact as well as an economic one.

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Almost 40 per cent of female SME business leaders are creating jobs, one in three are sponsoring local events, and a quarter are investing in local causes.

In short, they’re giving back – just like Edmonds.

“I risked everything to bring this start up to everyone and sometimes people go, ‘are you going to make lots of cash?'” she said.

“That’s not the aim. This actually is a social enterprise … so kids can play it [Dodgy or Not] before they live it.”

Edmonds was able to get the kids’ version of ’Dodgy or Not?’ up and running within a year and last month, she saw it introduced to about 170 Year 5 and 6 students at one Aussie school.

In just three weeks, the kids had racked up more than 22,000 games of ’Dodgy or Not?’ and learned exactly how to spot a suspicious text or email.

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The game encouraged the kids to question what they see online and dispelled any shame or stigma around talking about scams, something Edmonds says we all need to get better at.

Her goal is to eventually make the game available at schools across the country so we can ensure our kids are safer online and the next generation of Aussie adults are more scam-savvy than those who came before.

Last year, scams cost Aussies more than $300 million. Edmonds hopes that ’Dodgy or Not?’ will eventually help slash that figure.

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