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Speaker 1: Scams. Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bailey has been

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Speaker 1: given a new hat to wear of sorts. He's becoming

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Speaker 1: the Minister in charge of scam busting. NETS say for

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Speaker 1: releases data today which shows almost one in five of

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Speaker 1: us have been directly affected. Scam losses could be anywhere

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Speaker 1: between two hundred million and two point three billion dollars

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Speaker 1: a year. Andrew Bailey's with me this morning. Good morning minister,

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Speaker 1: Good morning Ryan. Tell me is this a new job

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Speaker 1: for you.

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Speaker 2: Well, I've already started doing it under Commerce in Small Business.

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Speaker 2: So at the beginning of this year I wrote to

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Speaker 2: the banks asking him to put in place confirmation and

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Speaker 2: pay you, which they're going to start doing it from

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Speaker 2: December to east that it should be in place based

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Speaker 2: the next year. But formerly I've picked out the role

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Speaker 2: because there's six ministry that sort of deal with scams,

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Speaker 2: and decision was, why don't we just have one person

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Speaker 2: sort of coordinates between all the ministers.

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Speaker 1: All right, so you're the scam guy. Why the discrepancy?

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Speaker 2: Why two hundred three there's anti scams by the.

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Speaker 1: Anti scam guy in two hundred mins million dollars to

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Speaker 1: two point three billion dollars. Why are the huge variance

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Speaker 1: and estimates.

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Speaker 2: You're quoting two different things. So the report of scams

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Speaker 2: per anim over the last couple of years has been

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Speaker 2: roughly two hundred million. The estimate is that a lot

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Speaker 2: of people because they feel a shamed for some reason,

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Speaker 2: they shouldn't because the level of sophistication don't report scams.

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Speaker 2: So mbhad and estimate that's government agency has had an

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Speaker 2: estimate of a billion. There's more recent estimate could be

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Speaker 2: a science two billion. But whatever, the thing is a

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Speaker 2: significant financial and also more importantly, you're just as importantly

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Speaker 2: emotional cost to New Zealanders.

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Speaker 1: So two hundred million is what we know we've been

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Speaker 1: scammed from the bands and two point three is what

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Speaker 1: people say that they've been scammed. So so what two

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Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of scams that we're too shy to

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Speaker 1: admit to.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, roughly, if the topic figure, I always worked off

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Speaker 2: a billion. But if it is a science, that's a

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Speaker 2: lot of people who are losing money, and they are different.

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Speaker 2: It's about ten different types of scams. It's romantic scams

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Speaker 2: that people know, investment scams there are another one that's

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Speaker 2: really prevalent at the moment of employment scams offering people

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Speaker 2: a job during a difficult time, and then for the

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Speaker 2: bank account in the meantime taking all the money out

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Speaker 2: of their bank account. It's just horrible. And of course

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Speaker 2: scams are now it's naturally driven, you know, it's not

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Speaker 2: sort of some local down the most of international plans.

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Speaker 1: Which it's going to make it very hard. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you get thousands of different scams coming in a day,

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Speaker 1: by text, by phone, by email from thousands and hundreds

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Speaker 1: of different countries. You're never going to stop this, are you?

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Speaker 2: No? Never going to stop it? Unfortunately, and it's going

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Speaker 2: to get an increasing sophistication. You know, people talk about

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Speaker 2: AI fake scams. You know the sophistication right now, it's

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Speaker 2: really increasingly difficult. That's why people to report it. That's happened.

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Speaker 2: It shouldn't be feel embarrassed about it because part of

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Speaker 2: what I've got to do one is we do a

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Speaker 2: lot of good stuff across both within the government and

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Speaker 2: also with an industry, but it's not as well coordinated

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Speaker 2: as it might be. And that's the real focus I've

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Speaker 2: got to do is work with minister or colleagues and

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Speaker 2: the industry. I'm not.

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Speaker 1: I'm not inspired with hope that you're going to crash

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Speaker 1: the scam system, but because no one's managed to do

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Speaker 1: it anywhere around the world. But we've text come in

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Speaker 1: that says, what are you going to do about the

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Speaker 1: banks if you get scammed and you report it to

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Speaker 1: the bank, should they have to and burst you.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's one of the three things I asked and

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Speaker 2: to do back in February. So confirmation and pay has

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Speaker 2: been locked and we're still in negotiation and discussions around

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Speaker 2: compensation scammed we haven't got the certainty and then want

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Speaker 2: an updated code. And then this start was meeting with

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Speaker 2: a whole lot of Tilecommunications people. I want to make

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Speaker 2: sure we've got a good sort of system in place.

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Speaker 2: So there's three actors we've got to really focus on.

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Speaker 2: Obviously the bank's the last resort, but most of the

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Speaker 2: scams are hosted on social media platforms and if you

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Speaker 2: really want to get scammed buying stuff through media platform.

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Speaker 1: But if you do get scammed, how long how long

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Speaker 1: could we get something on the compensation side of it.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's why I'm having discussions with the banks.

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Speaker 1: And when's out When you're expecting an outcome from that I.

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Speaker 2: Expect that we'll be talking about that in the next

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Speaker 2: few weeks.

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Speaker 1: All right, Andrew Batti, thank you very much for your time, Commerce,

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Speaker 1: Consumer Affairs. Now scam Buster for.

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Speaker 2: More from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to

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