Enterprise: Scam Busters
What these young guns are up to: Having experienced the problems kids face when gaming themselves, Toby and Iggy are getting huge traction in their efforts to keep kids safe online.
The inspiration behind Scam Busters was young founders Toby Musumeci and Iggy Mukhtar being scammed whIle gaming online. “I can still remember one time getting so upset that I smashed my keyboard (and got in big trouble for it),” Iggy recalls. “When Toby shared that he’d been scammed, too, causing him to feel depressed and stupid for falling for it, we realised it wasn’t just us – our friends were being scammed, too, and we felt we had to do something about it.”
The importance of the work they are doing is highlighted by recent research revealing that the gaming industry had the largest percentage of annual fraud growth in the US in 2021, with an increase of 60.3 per cent, year over year.
“They have more trust in us because we have more knowledge about the game than their parents.”
The boys founded Scam Busters in 2021, after they met through the MiniBoss Australia program, which teaches young entrepreneurs how to create profitable businesses that solve important world problems. Iggy, 9 years old at the time, is from Bryon Bay and Toby, then aged 10, lives in Sydney so when they started, they collaborated online to build the business.
Their first product was a video series teaching kids how not to get scammed on The Pet Simulator X game on the Roblox platform. “When kids are scammed playing Roblox, they’re losing real money,” Toby explains. “And whilst our parents aren’t happy with us losing our money, their biggest fear is that we aren’t safe online because the people we are playing with in these games aren’t who they say they are.
“Kids are too trusting and naive, which puts them at high risk for online identity theft. ‘Catfishing’ [people creating fake online identities] is a huge issue in many industries, especially gaming and online dating. Our next product we are creating right now teaches kids how to keep their personal information safe online.”
Toby and Iggy see the fact that their products are designed “by kids, for kids” as their USP. “Kids don’t listen to their parents, they listen to YouTubers and their peers,” Toby points out. “So, the most effective way to engage and educate children in gaming is through [such] influences. Parents are also frustrated with not knowing enough about the game itself to be able to help, so when they hear that there are kids out there battling on their kids’ behalf, they get excited and want to know more.”
Iggy believes they have gained a lot of attention because there are more and more scams being discovered each week. “The reason young kids from the Pet Simulator community choose us is that they have more trust in us because we have more knowledge about the game than their parents,” he explains. “And, because our videos make it easy to understand, offering a step-by-step guide to identify the scams that can trick new players.”
In July 2023, Toby and Iggy flew to Scotland with their families to compete at the MiniBoss World Cup, coming first in the SAGE category for ‘making a difference’. They backed that up in December last year by taking home first place for the MiniBoss Australia Start-Up Championships.
Looking to the future, Toby and Iggy plan to expand their services to cater for adults, through the formulation of three masterclasses for teaching parents how not to get scammed in the ‘real world’. They aspire to launch a YouTube channel with free videos helping kids online, and are working towards a collaboration with the government’s national anti-scam centre, Scamwatch.
This article first appeared in issue 44 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
