Speaker 1: Jilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. There have
Speaker 2: been a number of headlines trending throughout twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: so far, tariffs, trade wars, geopolitical tensions, and romance scams.
Speaker 2: Fake online relationships better known as catfishing, have existed as
Speaker 2: long as social media has been around, but the increasing
Speaker 2: prevalence of AI is making it trickier to tell fact
Speaker 2: from fiction. One woman in France was conned out of
Speaker 2: eight hundred thousand euros after believing she was in a
Speaker 2: relationship with Oscar winner Brad Pitt, while closer to home,
Speaker 2: US based Kiwi actor Martin Henderson has seen his face
Speaker 2: used as a front for these kind of scams. So
Speaker 2: how common are these elaborate scams and what protections can
Speaker 2: be put in place to better protect vulnerable people? Today
Speaker 2: on the Front Page, National Cybersecurity Center Threat and Incident
Speaker 2: Response Team Lead Tom Roberts is with us to discuss
Speaker 2: what can be done to break up with these scammers.
Speaker 2: First off, Tom, it seems like we're hearing about romance
Speaker 2: scams all the time, Awful tales of pensioners losing their
Speaker 2: retirement savings, and people believing they're in relationships with celebrities online.
Speaker 2: Things like that. Can you tell me how prevalent they
Speaker 2: actually are in New Zealand?
Speaker 3: Well, we know romance scams or dating scams or that
Speaker 3: sort of thing are severely underreported. People feel ashamed about it.
Speaker 3: They feel like they're more vulnerable because they've potentially lost something,
Speaker 3: they've exposed something often that involves sending intimate images, and
Speaker 3: so therefore people don't want to report things for us.
Speaker 3: Over the last reporting period, we saw about twenty eight
Speaker 3: dating and romance scams reported through to US. We know
Speaker 3: that number is very low. For what I said earlier,
Speaker 3: It's awful, though, isn't it. It's exceptionally awful.
Speaker 2: Do we know how much money is being lost due
Speaker 2: to romance scams.
Speaker 3: I don't have specific data relating directly to romance scams.
Speaker 3: I can say we had seventeen incidents over the last
Speaker 3: year that was one hundred thousand or more, and that
Speaker 3: was for you know, for whatever. It could have been
Speaker 3: unauthorized access, cryptocurrency scams, you know, people being tricked at
Speaker 3: when they're buying property. We had one for dating and romance,
Speaker 3: and that dating and romance scam category of over one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars. What's particularly concerning about the dating and
Speaker 3: romance scams is the way that they get money out
Speaker 3: of people is like it's a slow leach. It's withdrawing
Speaker 3: money small amounts over a long period of time. You
Speaker 3: don't actually realize that a lot of that money is
Speaker 3: leaving your bank account. It could be, you know, fifty
Speaker 3: dollars for a bill here, twenty dollars for a bit there,
Speaker 3: and before you know it, you're hooked and you've drained
Speaker 3: a lot of your bank account.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently A and Z alone sees about three cases
Speaker 2: a week where customers suffered a financial loss from a
Speaker 2: romance or friendship scam. The average loss was thirteen thousand,
Speaker 2: five hundred compared to two thousand, five hundred for any
Speaker 2: other type of scam. Do you reckon? That's about right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and ain zid You know, being a bank, when
Speaker 3: people have a problem with their finances, they go directly
Speaker 3: to the bank, as they should. You know, the bank
Speaker 3: will stop any transactions, automatic payments, and potentially help recruiter
Speaker 3: with funds where they can, So that would probably be
Speaker 3: about right.
Speaker 2: So, when these scams happen and they're reported to you, guys,
Speaker 2: what are the next steps from there? What do you
Speaker 2: do with it?
Speaker 3: Well, at NCC, we really just make sure that their
Speaker 3: cybersecurity hygiene and security is top notch and intact. Then
Speaker 3: the police or net safe are, depending on the type
Speaker 3: there will be able to provide that further advice. Certainly,
Speaker 3: we help them get into a date where you know,
Speaker 3: the bad person doesn't have access to their Gmail accounts
Speaker 3: or their Facebok or potentially their bank accounts, and we
Speaker 3: make sure that they have the right advice, the best
Speaker 3: advice in the world to be able to secure their
Speaker 3: cyber defenses. After that, the police can go down that
Speaker 3: prosecution track depending on the information that they've got available.
Speaker 2: Just this year, we heard of how multiple women around
Speaker 2: the world poured money and emotions into a romance scam
Speaker 2: using the image of a former Shortland Street star, Martin Henderson.
Speaker 4: Martin here just wanted to warn people again of the
Speaker 4: fact that there are a lot of people out there
Speaker 4: who are pretending to be me and trying to get
Speaker 4: people to believe that I'm in need and I need
Speaker 4: financial help or medical help, and they're essentially fleecing people
Speaker 4: out of a lot of money. I just can't tell
Speaker 4: people enough. I don't communicate with my followers. This is
Speaker 4: my only account, I promise you I do not I
Speaker 4: don't have another account.
Speaker 2: They lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and dedicated years
Speaker 2: to fake relationships. One woman alone lost three hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy five thousand dollars. Now, using a celebrities likeness and
Speaker 2: catfishing is just one way a romance scam works.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, there's multiple, absolutely multiple. They could be pretending
Speaker 3: to be a friend that you haven't seen in years.
Speaker 3: They could be using AI generated images. There's dozens and dozens.
Speaker 3: It's really bad for the celebrity ones because you've also
Speaker 3: got the well known person that's in the news and media,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, you know their name
Speaker 3: is being dragged through the mud. So it's awful for
Speaker 3: everyone involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this French woman was swindle. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you heard about this. She was windled out of a
Speaker 1: ton of money from somebody pretending to be rare. I
Speaker 1: don't like this AI stuff. The scammer used AI to
Speaker 1: generate pictures of Brad Pit. They catfished her for so
Speaker 1: long that she thought she was dating rab Pit. So
Speaker 1: what the scammers did was the scammers then said Radpit
Speaker 1: needed money for surgery. Okay, when I heard that, I said,
Speaker 1: I would like to know if the scammers are hiring,
Speaker 1: because apparently.
Speaker 2: I'm doing something what.
Speaker 1: I mean, good, great, honoring, integrity.
Speaker 2: And I saw a woman who believed she was in
Speaker 2: a relationship with Brad Pitt, who believed she was sending
Speaker 2: him around one point five million dollars for cancer treatment. Now,
Speaker 2: the comments on that story I remember were pretty harsh,
Speaker 2: things like, how could you believe this? That's stupid, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. But that's a huge reason why people
Speaker 2: don't come forward. Hey, that embarrassment aspect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, embarrassment is the number one reason why people wouldn't
Speaker 3: come forward about this sort of thing. I think when
Speaker 3: people are commenting on this, they need to make sure
Speaker 3: that they remember these people aren't just strangers. They could
Speaker 3: be your brother, sis, the best friend. Because people don't
Speaker 3: really talk about this so much, that's why people fall
Speaker 3: into the trap, and that's why it's not found sooner.
Speaker 3: These people that often fall for these types of scams,
Speaker 3: they're not blow people they're not. They're just the regular
Speaker 3: citizens who truly believe that they are in love and
Speaker 3: really nastily. You know, the bad actors that are siphoning
Speaker 3: the money are really good at their social engineering and
Speaker 3: they're really really manipulative in a way that many people
Speaker 3: potentially don't ever experience.
Speaker 2: And what are some of those ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when they start, they'll start with small amounts
Speaker 3: of money typically, and then they'll start doing it on
Speaker 3: a very regular basis, and you know, it'll just be
Speaker 3: consistent over time. Then there might be a wee bit
Speaker 3: of gas lighting in there. There might be depending on
Speaker 3: how they're doing it. If they're using different technology, they
Speaker 3: might say, let's have video calls, and so if people
Speaker 3: having video calls with people that they think of their love,
Speaker 3: of their life, and the adds legitimacy to us, and
Speaker 3: then they'll say, hey, let's potentially can you pay two
Speaker 3: thousand dollars for me to fly over or something like that.
Speaker 3: And then it starts getting really deep and really dark,
Speaker 3: not necessarily quickly, but over a period of time. And
Speaker 3: then when you've got you know, the elderly element to it,
Speaker 3: Like you mentioned before, these elderly don't necessarily want to
Speaker 3: talk about this stuff, so because it can be very
Speaker 3: embarrassing if they've got to tell their kids and things
Speaker 3: like that. So, look, there's multiple ways that they do it.
Speaker 3: But these social engineers are exceptionally skilled or what they do,
Speaker 3: and what they do is exceptionally nasty.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another case was an Auckland man who met a
Speaker 2: Singaporean woman on a dating app tender. He was tricked
Speaker 2: into sending five hundred and sixty nine thousand dollars believing
Speaker 2: he was investing in bitcoin. Now, how has the rise
Speaker 2: of dating apps changed the game here?
Speaker 3: It just makes it more easy for people to be
Speaker 3: fooled into fake relationships. The people that do them are
Speaker 3: often working in these sort of scam farm type areas
Speaker 3: where they are basically being some of them are being
Speaker 3: held under slave like conditions to extort money out of
Speaker 3: people through multiple different romance scams at once. There's that
Speaker 3: element to I guess about it.
Speaker 2: So there are places around the world where people are
Speaker 2: being held against their will and working in a kind
Speaker 2: of factory, scam factory or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, and I'm certainly not going to name places,
Speaker 3: but there are places where they basically go and they
Speaker 3: think they're going to be going into work, and then
Speaker 3: they'll get their passports and their identity documents held captive
Speaker 3: and then told that you can work them back for
Speaker 3: a certain amount of money. So often the people that
Speaker 3: are doing the scamming are victims as well, which is
Speaker 3: just terrific. And then the money flows back into organized crime,
Speaker 3: and then you have that sort of thing. To your
Speaker 3: point about cryptocurrency or dating apps before, it sort of
Speaker 3: means that because everything's digital, that the scammers or the
Speaker 3: nasty actors can run multiple at a time if they're
Speaker 3: in a different time zone. You know, that gives them
Speaker 3: the excuse to delay messaging you. So we'll delay messaging
Speaker 3: the victims so then they can run multiple This anecdotal
Speaker 3: evidence of now chatbots being used from machine learning algorithms.
Speaker 3: So it's getting complex, it's getting dark, and unfortunately it
Speaker 3: doesn't look like it's stopping anytime soon.
Speaker 2: In a world where it seems impossible to meet somebody
Speaker 2: organically and online dating is kind of the new norm,
Speaker 2: how do people stay vigilant if.
Speaker 3: You're using dating apps and to meet someone, All I'd
Speaker 3: say is that you just need to verify through different methods, right,
Speaker 3: So try and meet them as soon as possible, you know,
Speaker 3: move away from the apps, try and move to a
Speaker 3: method that you can verify. Even video calling might not
Speaker 3: necessarily be enough. But then if you're traveling overseas to
Speaker 3: meet these people, you know you're going to have to
Speaker 3: be cognizant of the safety elements that come into it.
Speaker 3: People just have to apply a certain amount of risk
Speaker 3: to themselves or a risk thought to themselves. The old
Speaker 3: fear go adage. If it's too good to be sure,
Speaker 3: it probably is, and then yeah, just make sure you verify, verify, verify.
Speaker 2: What's one of the worst cases you've seen.
Speaker 3: To be honest, the worst case that I've seen wasn't
Speaker 3: necessarily involving money so much, or at that point it
Speaker 3: didn't involve money, but it was involving into images. And
Speaker 3: so this person got into a bit of a romance scan.
Speaker 3: They reached out and said, hey, I don't think this
Speaker 3: is quite right. And then the person or the bad
Speaker 3: actors started saying that, you know, I've got all these
Speaker 3: images of you. I'm going to show the world, I'm
Speaker 3: going to show your friends, I'm going to show your family,
Speaker 3: I'm going to ruin your job. I'm going to ruin
Speaker 3: your career aspects. This poor person was just having an
Speaker 3: absolute mental battle that they were going through. Fortunately, what
Speaker 3: we were able to say to them is that we
Speaker 3: passed them over to the right agencies as well, but
Speaker 3: also that the bad actors often can't hurt you as
Speaker 3: much as what they think, and they'll have you to
Speaker 3: believe that the world is going to end, but it's not.
Speaker 3: They often don't have as much power as what they'll claim.
Speaker 3: They'll say that they will send stuff, or they'll expose
Speaker 3: you to the world and things like that. Even if
Speaker 3: they did do that, the person that's going to be
Speaker 3: exposed is going to be seen as a victim, right,
Speaker 3: It's going to be a tough period. But even if
Speaker 3: the actor could do that, so, yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 3: It was really rough for the person involved. I think
Speaker 3: they're doing a lot better now, thankfully, but just the
Speaker 3: mental toll was was heart wrenching.
Speaker 5: Cybersecurity expert Dominic Tuifoccus so scamers are grabbing videos posted
Speaker 5: online to create AI generated avatars that look and sound
Speaker 5: so much like the real person. They can fool people
Speaker 5: who know them well.
Speaker 6: You can even use just a picture of the person
Speaker 6: and then the lip syncing will will take care of
Speaker 6: the rest. So yeah, it doesn't. You don't need long
Speaker 6: video segments even if still image will do.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to video calling, you mentioned that
Speaker 2: it might not be enough. Is that because AI you
Speaker 2: can actually mimic video calls or use other videos to
Speaker 2: try and mimic a call.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's becoming easier and it's becoming cheaper. So
Speaker 3: it is for a person that's dedicated or determined enough,
Speaker 3: they can absolutely fake someone's face onto their body. There's
Speaker 3: some simple checks that you can do, you know, which
Speaker 3: is asking them to put the hand in front of
Speaker 3: their face, or turn the heat right round, or get
Speaker 3: up and pick something up from the background. But even
Speaker 3: then that can often not be enough for some things
Speaker 3: because people can just replay videos of them doing that,
Speaker 3: and they might set up their background knowing that someone's
Speaker 3: going to ask them to pick stuff up. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that the rise in artificial intelligence generated imagery is.
Speaker 2: Also heard as well. If you think that somebody is
Speaker 2: sent to an AI generated photo to ask them to
Speaker 2: send a photo back with an okay symbol with your hands,
Speaker 2: because the AI cannot really generate hands too well. Is
Speaker 2: that right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, small details like that show me, you know,
Speaker 3: pulling your left ear or something like that that is
Speaker 3: going to have a limited shelf life on its ability
Speaker 3: to be able to work, but at the moment, for
Speaker 3: most things, it seems to be a good method.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Tom, Thank you very much. That's
Speaker 2: it for this episode of The Front Page. You can
Speaker 2: read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at
Speaker 2: enzdherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced
Speaker 2: by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also a
Speaker 2: sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 2: in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.