SCAMBIO wins Rep. Maxine Waters’ 2025 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 43rd District

When asked what inspired the creation of SCAMBIO, the students said, “We once came across a YouTube video that explained the drastic number of reports, the type of scams, and the amount of money Americans have lost due to text and call-based scams. We were shocked that people just like us were taken advantage of by our emotions or ignorance to be deceived, especially the stories of people online that lost thousands after being tricked that their loved ones needed ‘help’. After some research, we found that $470 million was lost in 2024 to scams that started with text messages, and even more money was lost to other types of scams. AI was doing nothing but fueling the accuracy and frequency of scams, shown to have increased year by year. Although AI detection technologies are constantly evolving, the key factor to prevent scams lies with the people themselves, where cautiousness and awareness are very important. 

“This inspired us to create SCAMBIO, a web application that helps families and people protect loved ones through Scam Detection, Prevention, and Simulation. Using our web development skills we learned throughout high school, our goal became to create a website that not only educates users and detects scams in text transcripts, but also in an interactive and realistic simulation training that helps users experience scam scenarios safely and learn to identify red flags.”