Speaker 1: Kiyota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. It's been
Speaker 2: revealed that Kiwi's lost a record three billion dollars to
Speaker 2: scams this year. That's a thirty percent increase from two
Speaker 2: point three billion last year. Net Safe and the Global
Speaker 2: Anti Scam Alliance State of Scams in New Zealand report
Speaker 2: shows that scammers are getting more sophisticated and victims are
Speaker 2: facing persistent barriers to reporting and recovering their losses. So
Speaker 2: how should we protect ourselves and who should be held accountable?
Speaker 2: Today on the Front Page, netsafe's Sean Lyons is with
Speaker 2: us to break down the latest figures and discuss how
Speaker 2: New Zealand can better prepare itself for the evolving world
Speaker 2: of scams. First off, Sean, let's dive into the report.
Speaker 2: How many kiwis have experienced a scam within the last
Speaker 2: twelve months.
Speaker 3: Well, we're now talking about fairitys to the interest. From
Speaker 3: the figures that we've been able to together, we're saying
Speaker 3: probably close to more than eight percent, So eighty two
Speaker 3: percent from our report are experiencing a scam at some
Speaker 3: point in the last year, So this is not about
Speaker 3: occasional access. And if you kind of extrapolate the figures,
Speaker 3: you're probably talking about a person experiencing, you know, over
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty different scam attempts in a year,
Speaker 3: so that this is something that we're seeing regularly. For
Speaker 3: a lot of people, it's probably becoming the norm. So
Speaker 3: this is not something you might go, you know, and
Speaker 3: drop the sandwich when you see it's the kind of
Speaker 3: thing that now you're probably saying, okay, here's another one.
Speaker 3: And there's there's good things about that, but there's also
Speaker 3: some concerns around it. When things become really normal, when
Speaker 3: we start to become maybe a little bit sort of
Speaker 3: more casual about things, we might become a little bit blase,
Speaker 3: if we're trying to use the French word. And that's
Speaker 3: a concern I think is when we start to feel
Speaker 3: that things are a bit normal, maybe sometimes our guard
Speaker 3: goes down. We look for spotting one thing. When the
Speaker 3: scams change a little bit, then perhaps that's where some
Speaker 3: of us are being caught out. So it's definitely much
Speaker 3: more normal, as I say, but it doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: we're all we're all defended against it unfortunately, and we.
Speaker 2: Talk about experiencing scams, it's not actually people who have
Speaker 2: fallen victim to them, but you've just encountered it on
Speaker 2: a daily basis.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, So for some people, that might be that
Speaker 3: they're you know, they're sick and tired of getting the
Speaker 3: seventy fifth text in the last two months from to
Speaker 3: say that they owe a toll, or that they've been
Speaker 3: through a tunnel or something, or that there's a parcel
Speaker 3: waiting for them at a post office. That doesn't sound
Speaker 3: quite right. So people will see and spot those that
Speaker 3: that's what we really mean. But in amongst those, there'll
Speaker 3: be some people that experience a much more realistic or
Speaker 3: much more plausible message social media, email, whatever it is,
Speaker 3: and they'll actually follow through. So somewhere in those numbers
Speaker 3: are unfortunately people who are also falling victims to scams
Speaker 3: as well, And.
Speaker 2: Because is that generally the way to go, they cast
Speaker 2: a wide net as wide as possible, and just hope
Speaker 2: someone buy its. Because I got I myself got one
Speaker 2: of those messages saying Hi Mum, I've lost my phone
Speaker 2: or something. It's like, now, I'm not a mother normal,
Speaker 2: i'd probably ever be one so, but there will be
Speaker 2: some mothers that have actually got someone of that age,
Speaker 2: perhaps living out of home or living in different country.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so that there is definitely the kind of the
Speaker 3: scattergun approach. I suppose there's one way to put it
Speaker 3: that you know, you buy from somewhere, somebody buys from
Speaker 3: somewhere a list of email addresses, it might be narrowed
Speaker 3: down to a country, it may not be, and they
Speaker 3: just fire out an email message or a text message
Speaker 3: or whatever mechanism they've got for contacting people. So there
Speaker 3: are definitely those, but there are also so scams that
Speaker 3: can feel and maybe are a little more targeted. And
Speaker 3: now that's not to say that there's somebody out there
Speaker 3: that's picked on you. You know, that's not someone that
Speaker 3: said right today, I'm gonna scam Sean. But what might
Speaker 3: be occurring, we think in some of those situations is
Speaker 3: where there's data out there that might have been leaked
Speaker 3: when somebody broke into a computer system, with a whole
Speaker 3: lot of other sort of generally available information. People can
Speaker 3: piece these things together and then direct a scam that
Speaker 3: might feel an awful lot more targeted. I think that
Speaker 3: the best way might be the difference between getting a
Speaker 3: message from a bank one that you might have heard
Speaker 3: of but don't use, and then getting a message that
Speaker 3: comes from a bank that you do use. Now, that
Speaker 3: could either be just luck of the drawer scatter gun,
Speaker 3: or it might be that that particular scam is targeting
Speaker 3: customers of a particular organization, And it's those times that
Speaker 3: in both those situations, they can feel a lot more personal.
Speaker 3: And when they feel personal, they can often feel a
Speaker 3: lot more real. And that's maybe the first step that
Speaker 3: scammers will go through to try and get us hooked in.
Speaker 3: If they can find something that really talks to us
Speaker 3: to use that phrase, then that they're probably over their
Speaker 3: first hurdle. That they're not all the way through the gate,
Speaker 3: but they're certainly over the first hurdle.
Speaker 2: Right. So I've got another example here. I got a
Speaker 2: message from my brother saying is this you or is
Speaker 2: our dad getting scammed? The message read, Hi, Dad, messaging
Speaker 2: you from my tablet a sim travel plan. My old
Speaker 2: numbers no longer working since I changed networks. Please reply
Speaker 2: so I can send you my new number. My dad
Speaker 2: then replies Oki dokie love you xxx. Now, because he
Speaker 2: has replied that has he ended up on some master
Speaker 2: list somewhere where they're like, they've got a live one.
Speaker 3: I think that's probably enough to get him categorized in
Speaker 3: a different way, maybe on an existing list. I don't
Speaker 3: think that's single them out for any kind of special treatment.
Speaker 3: But what they're doing there is that they probably have
Speaker 3: just got a whole list of contact details. They're looking
Speaker 3: for people that are prepared to respond. Now the fact
Speaker 3: that he has responded and said Okki, love you and
Speaker 3: it was a from dad, maybe someone's going to assume, Okay,
Speaker 3: here's a contact number that is a dad, and because
Speaker 3: they're a dad, maybe they'd be more susceptible to a
Speaker 3: sort of parent based scam. So yeah, that's a common
Speaker 3: technique used. It is much more of that scatter gun.
Speaker 3: But again it's the steps that they take to take
Speaker 3: what might be millions of contact details and try and
Speaker 3: whittle it down to a smaller number, a more manageable
Speaker 3: number for them, that they can start to have a
Speaker 3: more focused attack on.
Speaker 2: In terms of some common scams, what you've mentioned the tolls,
Speaker 2: the getting a message from your bank, we've messaged my dad,
Speaker 2: falling forth, whatever that was. In terms of common ones,
Speaker 2: that are going around at the moment. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't really hear too much of the Nigerian prints anymore.
Speaker 2: Is he doing all right?
Speaker 3: I think he may have reinvented himself into a retail
Speaker 3: job perhaps because we're certainly seeing a lot more of
Speaker 3: the retail based scam. Look that the mechanism of the
Speaker 3: Nigerian princes what they used to call a four to
Speaker 3: one nine scam because it fitted a Nigerian penal code
Speaker 3: that was covered under this. It's those kinds of investment
Speaker 3: scams are definitely still around. They don't look like they did.
Speaker 3: They certainly don't come in on fax rolls, which is
Speaker 3: the scams that I remember back back in the very
Speaker 3: early days, but the mechanisms are the same. We're definitely
Speaker 3: seeing retail scams as the biggest single category. Now. Some
Speaker 3: of those might originate in offers that come in by emails.
Speaker 3: Some of those might be because people are browsing for
Speaker 3: certain products and coming across different sites. Investment scams, so
Speaker 3: people offering you get rich quick schemes, prizes, lotteries, grants,
Speaker 3: those kinds of things that the grant for being a
Speaker 3: one full citizen, unfortunately is one that's been around for
Speaker 3: a long time and is still going around because who
Speaker 3: doesn't want to think that their government's identified them as
Speaker 3: just a superb person and are going to get a
Speaker 3: whole lot of money as a result. But there are
Speaker 3: some scams that are constant that those would indicate what
Speaker 3: ones that are. But also what we do see continually
Speaker 3: is the change in what is that that very basic
Speaker 3: scam to have elements of that, but to look very differently.
Speaker 3: So probably the greatest example for us over the last
Speaker 3: few years is the kind of merging of a romance scam,
Speaker 3: a traditional you know, I meet you on a site online,
Speaker 3: former relationship with you. Originally, romance scams would all then
Speaker 3: be about I need some money because my mother's ill,
Speaker 3: or I've been arrested, the things that we're very very
Speaker 3: familiar now, those scams are often rather than pivoting into
Speaker 3: just give me some money, often they're pivoting into I've
Speaker 3: got a great investment opportunity for you, and I've been
Speaker 3: in in this cryptocurrency or these shares for a while.
Speaker 3: We should invest together like a romantic investment. And so
Speaker 3: they're they're they're using one scam, they're they're piggybacking a
Speaker 3: second one off of it. They are changing their tactics
Speaker 3: depending on what's working now that might be working on
Speaker 3: the individual or from what they know is working generally.
Speaker 3: So you know, the mechanisms of scams are very similar
Speaker 3: that the ways in which scammers use them, the scale
Speaker 3: and which they're using them, and I guess the tenacity
Speaker 3: to a lot of to a great extent that that
Speaker 3: scammers are prepared to apply to these things are what's
Speaker 3: changing and our indications, unfortunately of the success that they're experiencing,
Speaker 3: just how profitable these things are for for for scammers.
Speaker 1: This guy Jeculously came to New Zealand border the plane
Speaker 1: and May last year as part of a crime synder
Speaker 1: gift in. What they were doing was cold calling all
Speaker 1: the victims, mostly elderly, and pretending that they were part
Speaker 1: of a COVID police operation trying to catch bad crookeld
Speaker 1: bank staff and counterfeit notes. What they'd do is they
Speaker 1: would send this guy Jack Kennessey over by taxi to
Speaker 1: the elderly people's homes and ask them to have withdrawn
Speaker 1: large sums of money up to twenty thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: they'd hand it over when he used.
Speaker 3: The special code word.
Speaker 2: And they managed to get more than three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, within the space a day after arriving, within the
Speaker 1: space of fourteen days, mister Hennessy had visited twenty one
Speaker 1: residences and he managed to get three hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars and none of that money was ever recovered.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned retail scams. What does that entail that
Speaker 2: you pay for something you never get at Basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's probably the biggest one. But there are some
Speaker 3: that you pay for something and what arrives is not
Speaker 3: what you thought. Certainly heard of people purchasing goods and
Speaker 3: then photographs of the goods arriving, and so people then saying, well,
Speaker 3: we didn't scam you. You didn't check the fine print
Speaker 3: or where people will order one product and then a
Speaker 3: totally worthless and ridiculous other product arrives, and they, rather
Speaker 3: than saying it's a scam, they tried to bury themselves
Speaker 3: in it being a logistics erra or an ordering error
Speaker 3: or a system error. But the majority of them would
Speaker 3: be you know, I'm looking for some sneakers, try and
Speaker 3: find some they are at one price on one site
Speaker 3: that I know really well, and then I come across
Speaker 3: somewhere that's selling them a little bit less or a
Speaker 3: different color that I couldn't get anywhere else, and I
Speaker 3: think I'm going to take a risk on that, and
Speaker 3: then those products just simply never ever arrive and when
Speaker 3: I go back and try and text some match, and
Speaker 3: the likelihood is that the website or the contact that
Speaker 3: I was dealing with has disappeared into the ether. So
Speaker 3: that that would be the kind of main mechanism of
Speaker 3: retail scam And unfortunately that's hitting quite quite a considerable
Speaker 3: number of New Zealanders this year, as it has in
Speaker 3: previous years.
Speaker 2: How does New Zealand's scam exposure compare internationally? So are
Speaker 2: we keeping up the pace with global trends or kind
Speaker 2: of falling behind in prevention efforts.
Speaker 3: I think we are. We are comparable to to lots
Speaker 3: of the countries that that that we talk to. Scamming
Speaker 3: is not although the the impacts are very local, it's
Speaker 3: it's absolutely a global enterprise. It's a global business. I
Speaker 3: think many of the people that carry out the scams
Speaker 3: would have have almost no idea originally where their targets were.
Speaker 3: That that that might come that might come over in
Speaker 3: the conversations that we have, But I don't think we
Speaker 3: are particularly more vulnerable than than any of the other countries.
Speaker 3: Certainly that that that the netsafe would would talk to
Speaker 3: most countries are facing similar problems, similar losses, but but
Speaker 3: but by population, similar mechanisms. That there's there's lots of
Speaker 3: really great prevention work that goes on, there's lots of
Speaker 3: really great awareness raising that that that goes on. And
Speaker 3: I think you know, when you stop people in the
Speaker 3: streets and if you ask them about the different scams
Speaker 3: that are out there or their experience, they would probably
Speaker 3: be able to tell you, you know, with some detail
Speaker 3: about the scams that they had recognized. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a really good sign. But we still see losses.
Speaker 3: We know that that scammers are becoming increasingly more sophisticated,
Speaker 3: more determined, as I mentioned before, and that means that
Speaker 3: the things that we recognized as a scam yesterday. You know,
Speaker 3: you mentioned our friend the Prince a while ago that
Speaker 3: you know, anybody that tried to send out a message
Speaker 3: that that that looked like look like one of those scams,
Speaker 3: I think you know, most people would recognize that that's
Speaker 3: just not not real, but with a slightly different dressing,
Speaker 3: with a slightly different story, with a slightly different mechanism,
Speaker 3: Throw a few websites in, throw a few convincing videos in,
Speaker 3: a few fake news stories from media outlets that look
Speaker 3: real but actually aren't, and a lot of people could
Speaker 3: probably and actually do still lose money to the to
Speaker 3: what is basically the same scam, but just looking an
Speaker 3: awful lot looking off a lot different to how it
Speaker 3: might have done. So I think as a nation we
Speaker 3: do a good job both in prevention and awareness, but
Speaker 3: unfortunately there's a lot more to it than just prevention
Speaker 3: and awareness.
Speaker 2: So that's safe and the Global Anti Scam Alliance recommend
Speaker 2: an international network of anti scam centers. How realistic do
Speaker 2: you reckon that is for New Zealand to be a
Speaker 2: part of.
Speaker 3: I think it is fairly realistic that there are lots
Speaker 3: of organizations here that that that work in the space.
Speaker 3: There are lots of organizations who's customers are the targets
Speaker 3: of scams. And you know, like I said before, the
Speaker 3: many nations, most nations, all nations, I imagine, have the
Speaker 3: same issue. But it is absolutely a transnational crime. This
Speaker 3: is not There are obviously frauds and scams that go
Speaker 3: on inside New Zealand perpetrated against New Zealanders by New Zealanders,
Speaker 3: but the majority of the scams that we're talking about
Speaker 3: are across multiple countries where there are different staging steps
Speaker 3: across multiple countries. It breaches laws in different countries, but
Speaker 3: the laws are very different, and so it makes the
Speaker 3: kind of the response much harder. International cooperation is a
Speaker 3: huge part of this and is, as we say, I
Speaker 3: think absolutely necessary if we're going to start making significant
Speaker 3: inroads because when the victims here in New Zealand, but
Speaker 3: yet the perpetrators are in Belgium, I have no idea
Speaker 3: why I picked on Belgium, but they just came through
Speaker 3: my mind. What that really needs is coordinated effort between
Speaker 3: agencies and organizations in New Zealand and agencies and organizations
Speaker 3: in Belgium to try and get a handle on both
Speaker 3: ends of that problem. And it's that coordination that I
Speaker 3: think can reduce the time between when the scams happen
Speaker 3: and when we start to get a kind of footholder
Speaker 3: grasp on who's doing it and then try to close
Speaker 3: down those operations. Because These things are not about individuals anymore.
Speaker 3: This is not somebody in a darkened room with a
Speaker 3: hoodie on perpetrating a scam. These are, you know, complex
Speaker 3: commercial albeit criminal organizations, organized prime groups that these are
Speaker 3: who are perpetrating these scams at the scale that we're
Speaker 3: seeing it, and that requires coordination and cooperation right across
Speaker 3: the globe.
Speaker 4: I have curated a list of the top one hundred
Speaker 4: scammiest ads I have been served over the past six months,
Speaker 4: and I bought them off. But I did it to
Speaker 4: answer the age old question, what if it's not a
Speaker 4: scam and it changes my life forever? This is what
Speaker 4: everyone says right before they get scammed. We've got a watch.
Speaker 4: You guys are about to see the most epic ad
Speaker 4: you've ever seen.
Speaker 3: My favorite Carbonox watch is the new X Ranger. Let's
Speaker 3: take a look and see how tough it is.
Speaker 2: It is able to with stand up to ten pounds
Speaker 2: of weights.
Speaker 4: He's making his words longer on purpose to sound cooler.
Speaker 4: It's working. I kind of love this guy. I kind
Speaker 4: of really like that ad. Let's test it if I
Speaker 4: can break this thing. I'm not sure I can look
Speaker 4: that guy in the eyes anymore. All right, the Olkley's goodness,
Speaker 4: it didn't look like this in the ad. This was
Speaker 4: eighty dollars form factor. Fire never felt this masculine before, honestly,
Speaker 4: all right, let's try to break it zero stars, bro
Speaker 4: Come on, are.
Speaker 2: There any groups of people in particular who are susceptible
Speaker 2: to these kind of or any kind of scam? Really?
Speaker 2: I mean, we've got my dad here who immediately set
Speaker 2: told a scammer that he loves them. He is of
Speaker 2: the older generation. So but does it affect everyone or
Speaker 2: the older people I suppose more susceptible. It's nicely for
Speaker 2: my dad.
Speaker 3: It's a really good question. And I think that there's
Speaker 3: a perception. I think a lot of people have a
Speaker 3: perception that the older people are more susceptible two scams.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think susceptibility
Speaker 3: comes in the time and the place. It comes from
Speaker 3: the type of scam that's being put before people. I
Speaker 3: think often if there is a type NFL was pushed
Speaker 3: on that with my arm twisted up my back, I'd
Speaker 3: say it wasn't about age or demographic or socioeconomic states
Speaker 3: of any description. It's probably about capability and confidence. It's
Speaker 3: about people's familiarity with a particular technology. It's about their
Speaker 3: confidence to push back when somebody is putting them under pressure.
Speaker 3: It's about their ability to stop thinking and breathe in
Speaker 3: those situations and say, hang on, I've got a bad
Speaker 3: feeling about this. Something instinctively is wrong, and therefore I'm
Speaker 3: going to say no. Even if the person on the
Speaker 3: other end of the scam is saying that they're from
Speaker 3: the police or from the government, or they're threatening them
Speaker 3: in some way, or they in the case of those
Speaker 3: Hello Mum scams that you mentioned before, where you know,
Speaker 3: as those things progress, sometimes what people are hearing is
Speaker 3: that their loved one is in danger or in harm,
Speaker 3: or even in some extreme cases hearing messages directly from
Speaker 3: their loved ones that they're you know, physically being harmed
Speaker 3: at the time. Do we have the capabilities to stop
Speaker 3: and say, you know, is this likely? Is this realistic?
Speaker 3: Can I get somebody else's opinion that they're the people
Speaker 3: who are less likely to be scammed? But there are
Speaker 3: scams that target people that clearly are not older. But
Speaker 3: there are target scams that target people who are. If
Speaker 3: the right story at the right time when you're in
Speaker 3: the right state of mind, comes across your mailbox or
Speaker 3: your phone screen, whatever it might be, any one of
Speaker 3: us is susceptible to that scam. And I think it's
Speaker 3: really important that we all remember that none of us
Speaker 3: are scam proof. There could be a scam out there
Speaker 3: that makes you think, oh this is real, or oh
Speaker 3: I must act. You may not have seen it yet,
Speaker 3: and great if you haven't. But thinking that that any
Speaker 3: of us are immune because of how old we are,
Speaker 3: where we live, or what platforms were on is probably
Speaker 3: risky thinking.
Speaker 2: And I suppose that we should all be on our guard.
Speaker 2: Given Black Friday sales are coming up, it must just
Speaker 2: be scam Christmas times.
Speaker 3: It's nearly as big as Christmas time. You're right, it is.
Speaker 3: It is scam Christmas time, and you know, scam operations
Speaker 3: know that this is one of those times of the
Speaker 3: year when people are probably more active in online retail
Speaker 3: and they definitely definitely take advantage of that, and you know,
Speaker 3: for the reason that people maybe are more likely to
Speaker 3: be buying things, but also because it's a time that
Speaker 3: we're all probably that little bit more bombarded with messaging
Speaker 3: from legitimate organizations that creates a kind of fog, if
Speaker 3: you like, of those sort of offers and makes it
Speaker 3: a little harder I think for all of us to
Speaker 3: discern and differentiate the the what's real from what's not.
Speaker 3: And scammers will absolutely jump on that that that moment,
Speaker 3: those times where they think maybe that might be enough
Speaker 3: just to push Somebody who was cautious on Thursday are
Speaker 3: going to be a little bit less cautious on Black
Speaker 3: Friday because they're so chasing hard for that stainlessteel frymepan
Speaker 3: And if someone suddenly puts that offer in front of me,
Speaker 3: then then maybe I'm going to take the risks. So
Speaker 3: it is definitely a busy time for the scammers, and
Speaker 3: Christmas will will be too. The unfortunate thing that means
Speaker 3: it's also going to be a really disappointing time for
Speaker 3: a number of New Zealanders when those things just don't
Speaker 3: turn up.
Speaker 2: Well, I know what you want for Christmas now, Sean,
Speaker 2: thanks for joining us, no problem at all. That's it
Speaker 2: for this episode of the Front Page. You can read
Speaker 2: more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enziherld
Speaker 2: dot co dot enz. The Front Page is produced by
Speaker 2: Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also our editor.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Danielscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for
Speaker 2: another look behind the headlines.