Proprietary signals derived from 16,815,813 ABN records and real-world supplier verifications across Australian businesses. Updated August 2026.
Across 292 supplier verifications on Gumshoe, 65 returned at least one WARN or FAIL across our 8 verification checks. The average assurance score was 92/100.
The majority of these signals are not outright fraud — they're the gaps that make fraud possible. Missing email authentication, unregistered GST, mismatched domain ages. Individually minor. Together, they're the fingerprint of an organisation that hasn't been scrutinised.
Percentage of verified suppliers that triggered a warning or failure on each check. Data derived from Gumshoe's live verification engine.
Individual signals are flagged separately. When multiple signals correlate, Gumshoe identifies composite risk patterns — combinations that are statistically uncommon in legitimate, established businesses.
Annual ABN registrations (new entities) vs cancellations, 2016–2025. 2025 saw the highest rate of new business registrations on record — 1,023,937 new ABNs — reflecting post-COVID entrepreneurship and the gig economy surge. 2024 saw the highest cancellation rate — 1,017,596 ABNs cancelled — a sign of market normalisation and economic pressure.
A rising cancellation rate means more dormant, dissolved and reused ABNs in circulation — increasing the risk that a supplier ABN appears active when the underlying business is not.
Gumshoe cross-references supplier ABNs against a continuously updated network of public compliance registers. This is the scale of what's out there.
An active ABN tells you very little. Our data shows 4.8% of actively searched ABNs are cancelled at time of verification — and many more have silent risk signals that a basic ABN lookup will never surface.
The single most common risk signal we detect is weak or absent email infrastructure — no DMARC, no SPF, free-tier providers — in suppliers presenting themselves as established businesses. Legitimate businesses invest in this. Fraudulent ones don't.
When a supplier's website domain was registered after their ABN — or only weeks before they approached you — it's a significant red flag. We check this automatically against WHOIS registration records.
A single WARN is often acceptable — many small businesses legitimately have a thin digital footprint. But when 4-6 checks flag simultaneously, our data shows this pattern is disproportionately associated with supplier disputes and fraud events.
ABN, GST, ASIC, insolvency, licences, adverse records — 20+ registers, free, in 60 seconds.
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Of every entity type that registered an ABN in 2019, what percentage is still active today? These are the real odds of a supplier still being in business five years after you first engage them.
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