Apate Deploys AI Agents Undercover to Waste Scammers' Time and Harvest Fraud Intelligence

An Australian startup is turning the tables on fraudsters by sending thousands of undercover AI agents to impersonate victims and extract actionable scam intelligence. Apate.ai, founded in 2024 by cyber-intelligence researcher Dali Kaafar, has deployed AI-powered agents across voice calls, text messages, emails, phishing links, and social media to engage with scammers while collecting evidence of fraud infrastructure. Rather than companies using AI agents purely to accelerate business operations, Apate weaponizes them as decoys—bots that impersonate unsuspecting victims with diverse ages, genders, accents, and languages, staying in character to extract details like bank accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, phone numbers, and malicious websites.