Scam cases surge with increasingly clever tactics

facing persistent barriers to reporting and recovering their losses. So how should we protect ourselves and who should be held accountable? Today on the Front Page, netsafe's Sean Lyons is with us to break down the latest figures and discuss how New Zealand can better prepare itself for the evolving world of scams. First off, Sean, let's dive into the report. How many kiwis have experienced a scam within the last twelve months.

so that this is something that we're seeing regularly. For a lot of people, it's probably becoming the norm. So this is not something you might go, you know, and drop the sandwich when you see it's the kind of thing that now you're probably saying, okay, here's another one. And there's there's good things about that, but there's also

some concerns around it. When things become really normal, when we start to become maybe a little bit sort of more casual about things, we might become a little bit blase, if we're trying to use the French word. And that's a concern I think is when we start to feel that things are a bit normal, maybe sometimes our guard goes down. We look for spotting one thing. When the scams change a little bit, then perhaps that's where some

of us are being caught out. So it's definitely much more normal, as I say, but it doesn't mean that we're all we're all defended against it unfortunately, and we.

that's what we really mean. But in amongst those, there'll be some people that experience a much more realistic or much more plausible message social media, email, whatever it is, and they'll actually follow through. So somewhere in those numbers are unfortunately people who are also falling victims to scams as well, And.

can feel and maybe are a little more targeted. And now that's not to say that there's somebody out there that's picked on you. You know, that's not someone that said right today, I'm gonna scam Sean. But what might be occurring, we think in some of those situations is where there's data out there that might have been leaked when somebody broke into a computer system, with a whole

lot of other sort of generally available information. People can piece these things together and then direct a scam that might feel an awful lot more targeted. I think that the best way might be the difference between getting a message from a bank one that you might have heard of but don't use, and then getting a message that

comes from a bank that you do use. Now, that could either be just luck of the drawer scatter gun, or it might be that that particular scam is targeting customers of a particular organization, And it's those times that in both those situations, they can feel a lot more personal. And when they feel personal, they can often feel a lot more real. And that's maybe the first step that scammers will go through to try and get us hooked in.

If they can find something that really talks to us to use that phrase, then that they're probably over their first hurdle. That they're not all the way through the gate, but they're certainly over the first hurdle.

for people that are prepared to respond. Now the fact that he has responded and said Okki, love you and it was a from dad, maybe someone's going to assume, Okay, here's a contact number that is a dad, and because they're a dad, maybe they'd be more susceptible to a sort of parent based scam. So yeah, that's a common technique used. It is much more of that scatter gun.

But again it's the steps that they take to take what might be millions of contact details and try and whittle it down to a smaller number, a more manageable number for them, that they can start to have a more focused attack on.

early days, but the mechanisms are the same. We're definitely seeing retail scams as the biggest single category. Now. Some of those might originate in offers that come in by emails. Some of those might be because people are browsing for

certain products and coming across different sites. Investment scams, so people offering you get rich quick schemes, prizes, lotteries, grants, those kinds of things that the grant for being a one full citizen, unfortunately is one that's been around for a long time and is still going around because who doesn't want to think that their government's identified them as just a superb person and are going to get a

whole lot of money as a result. But there are some scams that are constant that those would indicate what ones that are. But also what we do see continually is the change in what is that that very basic scam to have elements of that, but to look very differently. So probably the greatest example for us over the last few years is the kind of merging of a romance scam, a traditional you know, I meet you on a site online,

former relationship with you. Originally, romance scams would all then be about I need some money because my mother's ill, or I've been arrested, the things that we're very very familiar now, those scams are often rather than pivoting into just give me some money, often they're pivoting into I've got a great investment opportunity for you, and I've been in in this cryptocurrency or these shares for a while.

We should invest together like a romantic investment. And so they're they're they're using one scam, they're they're piggybacking a second one off of it. They are changing their tactics depending on what's working now that might be working on the individual or from what they know is working generally.

So you know, the mechanisms of scams are very similar that the ways in which scammers use them, the scale and which they're using them, and I guess the tenacity to a lot of to a great extent that that scammers are prepared to apply to these things are what's changing and our indications, unfortunately of the success that they're experiencing, just how profitable these things are for for for scammers.

bank staff and counterfeit notes. What they'd do is they would send this guy Jack Kennessey over by taxi to the elderly people's homes and ask them to have withdrawn large sums of money up to twenty thousand dollars, and they'd hand it over when he used.

we didn't scam you. You didn't check the fine print or where people will order one product and then a totally worthless and ridiculous other product arrives, and they, rather than saying it's a scam, they tried to bury themselves in it being a logistics erra or an ordering error

or a system error. But the majority of them would be you know, I'm looking for some sneakers, try and find some they are at one price on one site that I know really well, and then I come across somewhere that's selling them a little bit less or a different color that I couldn't get anywhere else, and I think I'm going to take a risk on that, and then those products just simply never ever arrive and when I go back and try and text some match, and

the likelihood is that the website or the contact that I was dealing with has disappeared into the ether. So that that would be the kind of main mechanism of retail scam And unfortunately that's hitting quite quite a considerable number of New Zealanders this year, as it has in previous years.

That that that might come that might come over in the conversations that we have, But I don't think we are particularly more vulnerable than than any of the other countries. Certainly that that that the netsafe would would talk to most countries are facing similar problems, similar losses, but but but by population, similar mechanisms. That there's there's lots of really great prevention work that goes on, there's lots of

really great awareness raising that that that goes on. And I think you know, when you stop people in the streets and if you ask them about the different scams that are out there or their experience, they would probably be able to tell you, you know, with some detail about the scams that they had recognized. And I think that's a really good sign. But we still see losses.

We know that that scammers are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, more determined, as I mentioned before, and that means that

the things that we recognized as a scam yesterday. You know, you mentioned our friend the Prince a while ago that you know, anybody that tried to send out a message that that that looked like look like one of those scams, I think you know, most people would recognize that that's just not not real, but with a slightly different dressing, with a slightly different story, with a slightly different mechanism, Throw a few websites in, throw a few convincing videos in,

a few fake news stories from media outlets that look real but actually aren't, and a lot of people could probably and actually do still lose money to the to what is basically the same scam, but just looking an awful lot looking off a lot different to how it might have done. So I think as a nation we do a good job both in prevention and awareness, but unfortunately there's a lot more to it than just prevention and awareness.

same issue. But it is absolutely a transnational crime. This is not There are obviously frauds and scams that go on inside New Zealand perpetrated against New Zealanders by New Zealanders, but the majority of the scams that we're talking about are across multiple countries where there are different staging steps across multiple countries. It breaches laws in different countries, but the laws are very different, and so it makes the

kind of the response much harder. International cooperation is a huge part of this and is, as we say, I think absolutely necessary if we're going to start making significant inroads because when the victims here in New Zealand, but yet the perpetrators are in Belgium, I have no idea why I picked on Belgium, but they just came through

my mind. What that really needs is coordinated effort between agencies and organizations in New Zealand and agencies and organizations in Belgium to try and get a handle on both ends of that problem. And it's that coordination that I think can reduce the time between when the scams happen and when we start to get a kind of footholder grasp on who's doing it and then try to close down those operations. Because These things are not about individuals anymore.

This is not somebody in a darkened room with a hoodie on perpetrating a scam. These are, you know, complex commercial albeit criminal organizations, organized prime groups that these are who are perpetrating these scams at the scale that we're seeing it, and that requires coordination and cooperation right across the globe.

of any description. It's probably about capability and confidence. It's about people's familiarity with a particular technology. It's about their confidence to push back when somebody is putting them under pressure. It's about their ability to stop thinking and breathe in those situations and say, hang on, I've got a bad

feeling about this. Something instinctively is wrong, and therefore I'm going to say no. Even if the person on the other end of the scam is saying that they're from the police or from the government, or they're threatening them in some way, or they in the case of those Hello Mum scams that you mentioned before, where you know, as those things progress, sometimes what people are hearing is that their loved one is in danger or in harm, or even in some extreme cases hearing messages directly from

their loved ones that they're you know, physically being harmed at the time. Do we have the capabilities to stop and say, you know, is this likely? Is this realistic? Can I get somebody else's opinion that they're the people who are less likely to be scammed? But there are scams that target people that clearly are not older. But

there are target scams that target people who are. If the right story at the right time when you're in the right state of mind, comes across your mailbox or your phone screen, whatever it might be, any one of us is susceptible to that scam. And I think it's really important that we all remember that none of us are scam proof. There could be a scam out there that makes you think, oh this is real, or oh I must act. You may not have seen it yet,

and great if you haven't. But thinking that that any of us are immune because of how old we are, where we live, or what platforms were on is probably risky thinking.

It is scam Christmas time, and you know, scam operations know that this is one of those times of the year when people are probably more active in online retail and they definitely definitely take advantage of that, and you know, for the reason that people maybe are more likely to be buying things, but also because it's a time that we're all probably that little bit more bombarded with messaging from legitimate organizations that creates a kind of fog, if

you like, of those sort of offers and makes it a little harder I think for all of us to discern and differentiate the the what's real from what's not. And scammers will absolutely jump on that that that moment, those times where they think maybe that might be enough just to push Somebody who was cautious on Thursday are going to be a little bit less cautious on Black Friday because they're so chasing hard for that stainlessteel frymepan And if someone suddenly puts that offer in front of me,

then then maybe I'm going to take the risks. So it is definitely a busy time for the scammers, and Christmas will will be too. The unfortunate thing that means it's also going to be a really disappointing time for a number of New Zealanders when those things just don't turn up.