Speaker 1: Cura.
Speaker 2: I'm Helen from Chezy's and I'm here with Pa, our
Speaker 2: security manager, to talk about scams. Scammers are catching lots
Speaker 2: of New Zealanders out, so we thought we'd look at
Speaker 2: the psyche of a scammer, some of the red flags
Speaker 2: that we all miss and what to do with you
Speaker 2: or someone you know get scammed. Hi, Pier, good to
Speaker 2: have you in the studio.
Speaker 1: Well thanks for having me in.
Speaker 2: With scammers, what is the psyche? What's the behavior behind
Speaker 2: their motivation and the behaviors that they exhibit toward unsuspecting people.
Speaker 1: I think the psyche of a scammer is ultimately rooted
Speaker 1: in financial gain, but beneath that, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things going on. You're depending on the type of scam
Speaker 1: and the type of person you're dealing with. Often people
Speaker 1: involved in scams are part of very large networks and
Speaker 1: very complex kind of scam infrastructure, so to speak. Very
Speaker 1: often the people you're talking about are you talking to
Speaker 1: or chatting whether or who are called cold calling you
Speaker 1: and things like that, are actually people coming from a
Speaker 1: place of desperation. Sometimes they are victims themselves. They might
Speaker 1: be stuck in a debt track or something like that
Speaker 1: where they've got no choice but to your continue with
Speaker 1: the activity. And other times they don't actually know they're
Speaker 1: involved in a scam. As far as they're aware, they've
Speaker 1: got a legitimate outbound call center role or your sales
Speaker 1: role to refer people into the depths of a scam network.
Speaker 2: They are just how sophisticated are these scam rings?
Speaker 1: Incredibly sophisticated and incredibly well funded. So generally you have
Speaker 1: you're at the top level international crime syndicate, you're involved
Speaker 1: who do a lot of the planning and set up
Speaker 1: a lot of the infrastructure and provide a lot of
Speaker 1: the technology for scams to take place. And then a
Speaker 1: lot of the kind of legwork and the scam behavior
Speaker 1: that the public see is actually like outsourced across the world,
Speaker 1: particularly in third world countries where people may not have
Speaker 1: a better choice for an income.
Speaker 2: What are the phases of being scammed right from the
Speaker 2: very beginning to the end, would you say, so.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the kind of initial phase of a scam.
Speaker 1: This is a phase where scammers tend to cast a
Speaker 1: very wide net. It's quite rare that they're targeting individuals.
Speaker 1: At this point. You imagine yourself going about your ordinary business.
Speaker 1: You might see a post on social media that's you're
Speaker 1: making an offer you can't refuse. You things in your
Speaker 1: email inbox. You know they have a really strong sense
Speaker 1: of urgency about them, that you have a call to action,
Speaker 1: that you need to action then and there without thinking
Speaker 1: about it too much further. And these will inevitably have
Speaker 1: the goal of putting you in contact with a scammer
Speaker 1: who will communicate with you and bring a person deeper
Speaker 1: into the scam.
Speaker 2: What would be the second phase of a scam.
Speaker 1: Once you've made contact with the scammer, it's all about
Speaker 1: building trust and rapport from their side. Obviously, you're a
Speaker 1: lot of people are aware that scams happen. We see
Speaker 1: communications day in day out about how to protect ourselves
Speaker 1: from scams, and so scammers have to socially engineer their
Speaker 1: way around the kind of your internal suspicion that we maintain.
Speaker 1: And so at that point you start seeing that kind
Speaker 1: of foot in the door pattern or the escalating yeses
Speaker 1: where they'll make really small, innocuous asks of a person
Speaker 1: and slowly ramp up those asks. So no request from
Speaker 1: a scammer feels like very much bigger than the last request,
Speaker 1: but actually after ten or so requests, you know they're
Speaker 1: asking for your much larger things. At that point, the
Speaker 1: scam is if someone's being roped in. These scammers have
Speaker 1: kind of generated a lead, and very often they'll rely
Speaker 1: on something like triangulation where they bring in a third person,
Speaker 1: their manager or their special advisor, who not only is
Speaker 1: it an appeal to authority, but it's also putting you
Speaker 1: in a position where you're really privileged to kind of
Speaker 1: have that time with them, right and often you're in
Speaker 1: the case of things like investment scams, it's on the
Speaker 1: basis of, oh, we're giving you this free advice for
Speaker 1: a very limited time, so you better make the most
Speaker 1: of that, or you miss out on your returns or
Speaker 1: potentially you won't get to be part of their special
Speaker 1: advice program or whatever the case may be. And it's
Speaker 1: also at that stage an opportunity for them to triarge victims. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if in their communications of victims indicated that they have
Speaker 1: a high net worth or they have a lot of
Speaker 1: money to it, or that they could potentially spend, then
Speaker 1: they're likely to get referred to a higher performing manager
Speaker 1: to try and convert that into income. For the scam,
Speaker 1: the other things. You'll notice that that kind of second
Speaker 1: stage is very often someone will get pulled into a
Speaker 1: group chat. There'll be lots of people in there, people
Speaker 1: talking really positively, maybe about the returns of the scam
Speaker 1: and things like that, but most of those people are
Speaker 1: going to be plants by the scammers you're to convince
Speaker 1: you give you that kind of sense of safety that
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people are benefiting from it. Once
Speaker 1: you get into that kind of interaction with the kind
Speaker 1: of scam manager or where you're at the point where
Speaker 1: they're trying to actually execute the scam and get you
Speaker 1: to do the thing that takes them to the angle,
Speaker 1: whether that's providing bank account can't details, credentials, transferring funds,
Speaker 1: you're investing in a specific instrument. In the case of
Speaker 1: investment scam, there's generally a shift in behavior with these scammers.
Speaker 1: You're no longer in a position where they're being nice
Speaker 1: to you and giving you all this great advice and
Speaker 1: kind of trying to rip you in this kind of
Speaker 1: almost sinister feedback loop of when when you do the
Speaker 1: things they ask, they're very very kind to you and
Speaker 1: and very praising, But when you're non compliant, they'll often
Speaker 1: be quite cruel, and that's that kind of cult like
Speaker 1: behavioral loop where you get conditioned to doing the things
Speaker 1: that make them happy, even though effectively they're a stranger
Speaker 1: on the internet. Once a scam is kind of executed
Speaker 1: on whatever its initial goal is, very often either they
Speaker 1: go into like a cover up phase. You're maybe there
Speaker 1: was a pump and dump scam, and they go, oh, no,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a pump and dump, but you know, there's
Speaker 1: these malicious people on the market short selling our stock.
Speaker 1: We're sorry that you're falling victim to that. You know,
Speaker 1: we're going to do the best we can to make
Speaker 1: things right. Or sometimes they will just fall silent. You'll
Speaker 1: get blocked. You the money, he's gone, they don't care
Speaker 1: about you anymore. But also sometimes they will take the
Speaker 1: turn of oh, you know, we're very sorry you lost money.
Speaker 1: We can help compensate you, and then kind of bring
Speaker 1: you back into the fold of complying with them and
Speaker 1: participating further in their scam and losing out a bit more.
Speaker 1: And though that kind of stuff we see more and
Speaker 1: more of now, where not only is it happening from
Speaker 1: the scam is someone's initially interacting with. But people are
Speaker 1: searching online on social media. You're on Reddit, You're wherever
Speaker 1: they go for information like what can I do? How
Speaker 1: can I get my money back? And then they see ah,
Speaker 1: like join this WhatsApp group, which is a group for
Speaker 1: victims of this specific scam, you know, to get help.
Speaker 1: We're going to put together a class action lawsuit or
Speaker 1: you know, whatever they kind of framing they put around
Speaker 1: it might be. And then immediately people get pulled back
Speaker 1: into a secondary scam of oh, we can recover your money,
Speaker 1: but it requires a fee, or we can only refund
Speaker 1: to your credit card or your wise accounts, so we
Speaker 1: need those details to refund to it, and things like that,
Speaker 1: and all along this way, they're farming information from you
Speaker 1: because your information has value, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: they're overloading you with information to the point where, oh,
Speaker 1: this system I'm interacting with is so complex that I
Speaker 1: can't handle it by myself, and I must need these
Speaker 1: people to help me. Sinister, sinister, indeed, pey, what are
Speaker 1: some of the.
Speaker 2: Red flags that many of us miss when it comes
Speaker 2: to scamming.
Speaker 1: I think, like we have you know, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of scam education over the years, right, and some
Speaker 1: of the your common red flags we talk about is
Speaker 1: that kind of sense of urgence. See, you know, if
Speaker 1: you don't engage with us now, you might miss out
Speaker 1: on your incredible returns, on a refund that you're apparently owed,
Speaker 1: you're on things like that, or you're in other cases,
Speaker 1: there's a sense of urgency around if you don't respond
Speaker 1: to us, you might be in like legal trouble and
Speaker 1: things like that. There's nearly always a sense of secrecy,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of interesting in some of the widest
Speaker 1: bread scams now where we see things like group chats
Speaker 1: and that, because there's like this balance of scammers want
Speaker 1: to recruit more people into the scam, and you know,
Speaker 1: your friends and family maybe they want these unrealistic returns too.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side, you can't tell too many people.
Speaker 1: There's only limited spaces. You're like, don't broadcast this too
Speaker 1: far because or or else will run out of spaces
Speaker 1: and you won't get whatever you'uring goal is here, and
Speaker 1: you're the reason they're so secretive like that, And why
Speaker 1: there's always this sense of exclusivity is purely because if
Speaker 1: you tell enough people about it, someone will tell you
Speaker 1: it's a scam, and like the reality is as well.
Speaker 1: Between the kind of first and last stages of most scams,
Speaker 1: you're from that initial phishing, email, social media, ad impersonating
Speaker 1: someone or something like that, you're you go into the
Speaker 1: second stage, which feels really unrelated to the first part.
Speaker 1: You're for example, well, when ad impersonating a company, you
Speaker 1: might interact with that and then get routed to a
Speaker 1: group chat which claims to be from somewhere else entirely,
Speaker 1: and that should be a red flag right there. Another
Speaker 1: really big red flag you're when you are dealing with
Speaker 1: someone claiming to be an organization is when they're asking
Speaker 1: you for information that that organization should already have about you,
Speaker 1: or even requesting things like screenshots.
Speaker 2: What would you say people can do if they have
Speaker 2: been scammed or actually someone they know who and they're
Speaker 2: close to, who's been scammed and is obviously pretty upset
Speaker 2: with having lost whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: So I think for individuals who feel like they've beformen
Speaker 1: victim of a scam, your first priority is if you
Speaker 1: have given over any account information and things like that,
Speaker 1: is to resecure your accounts. You change your password enable
Speaker 1: multi factor authentication and things like that, and then reach
Speaker 1: out to the organization you're in question. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if your chasy's count account was involved, we'd really like
Speaker 1: to know about it so that we can help keep
Speaker 1: you safe. In the case of your people whose fat
Speaker 1: friends or famamily members might be scammed, it can get
Speaker 1: really tricky really quickly. The reality of your modern scams
Speaker 1: and the kind of dark psychology that exists in that
Speaker 1: space is the longer someone is engaged with scammers, the
Speaker 1: more brainwashed in the sense they are, and the more
Speaker 1: kind of attached to the scam they become, and they
Speaker 1: developed this kind of idea of some cost where if
Speaker 1: they just engage with it more, maybe they'll get that
Speaker 1: or whatever they've lost so far back and they don't
Speaker 1: want to lose that hope. I think the best bit
Speaker 1: in some circumstances is if you know what accounts are involved,
Speaker 1: or if it's with your bank, if it's with another platform,
Speaker 1: you're reaching out to them and fearing, hey, I think
Speaker 1: my family members being scammed, Like you're an organization, well
Speaker 1: often be able to share information you're to you, but
Speaker 1: they will be able to investigate and have a look
Speaker 1: and help support your support that person. And of course
Speaker 1: if you are quite concerned about your someone's behavior, like
Speaker 1: the kind of them concealing what they're doing with money
Speaker 1: and things, and you think they might be engaged with
Speaker 1: a scam, the police can also support with.
Speaker 2: That thanks peer. Three takeaways about scamming. One would be
Speaker 2: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,
Speaker 2: so stop while you're ahead. The second thing is if
Speaker 2: you're talking to an organization that should have your information already,
Speaker 2: that's a red flag. They won't be asking you for
Speaker 2: it because, as I say, they should have had it already.
Speaker 2: And thirdly, if you're contacted by an organization that's been
Speaker 2: you think impersonated, check with the organizations and the verified
Speaker 2: channels to see in fact if it is a scam
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 1: From seven St