July 21, 2025 • 16 mins
Scams have always been a hot topic.
As technology gets more sophisticated, Kiwis of all ages are becoming more vulnerable to falling for them.
Estimates of how much money we’ve lost varies, though one NetSafe and Global Antiscam Alliance report estimated over 2 billion dollars lost last year alone.
So what is being done to try and solve this crisis, and do banks and the government need to take more responsibility?
NZ Herald senior reporter Lane Nichols joins us today on The Front Page to discuss the latest scammers and what solutions there could be in future.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kiota.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Scams have
always been a hot topic. As technology gets more sophisticated,
kiwis of all ages are becoming vulnerable to falling for them.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Estimates of how much money.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We've lost varies, though one net Safe and Global Anti
Scam Alliance report estimated over two billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Was lost last year alone.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So what has been done to try and solve this crisis?
And do banks and the government need to take more responsibility?
And Zet Herald's senior reporter Lane Nichols joins us today
on the Front Page to discuss the latest scammers and what.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Solutions there could be.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
First off, Lane, you've been covering scams and banking extensively
for years now. It feels like you've become the country's
leading journalist in this space.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
What got you into it?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Well, it was accidental, really. I was assigned a story
about a guy that had lost one hundred and thirty
six thousand dollars just disappeared from his bank account down
in South London and I got talking to him and
it really just snowball and it's one of those things
where you start writing about something and people start writing
unto you, saying the same thing happened to me, but
(01:36):
only with yeah, I just it became a bit of
a fixation in a two and a half year project since.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
You began covering this round, How has the world of scamming,
I guess evolved? So we always think about scams like
some Nigerian princes sending us an email because we've won
some money, or we've won some money and we can
send our bank details through and stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
How sophisticated are they now?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well, I mean it's constantly changing. It's a landscape that's
this ever evolving. People describe it as whackamol. You know,
one gets stamped out and then a new one springs up.
The technology aspect with AI, which is starting to come
into things. I've done stories about AI deep fakes, one
of Christopher Luxon apparently telling pensions that they should invest
(02:25):
in cryptocurrency. A woman lost two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars to it. It's incredible how skilled the scammers are
as manipulated and how talented they are at what they do.
You've moved on from things like tech scams, which you
still get people sending out malicious links that will download
software onto your computer and send all your your login details,
(02:46):
your banking back to to someone wherever they are. People
being cold called, right through to deep fakes. It's constantly changing.
Who knows what's around the corner.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
The scariest world because if your voice all your faces
on the internet, then it can potentially be used. Well.
I've heard the stories about, you know, mothers getting calls
from their kids who live overseas and it's their voice
asking her for money for an emergency.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's terrifying. How do you know what's real and what's not?
And that's only going to get harder, I would imagine
as things go forward.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
There's a huge emotional toll on victims. Obviously.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
What are some of the commonalities that you've seen through
the victims that you've spoken to.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's funny you asked that I was going back through
my dictaphone recently and listening to they to delete and
make some space, and I was listening to interview after
interview with people who had lost their life savings, listening
to what they've been through and the emotional toll, the embarrassment,
the shame, you know, the financial stress that's put them under.
(03:51):
But just the worst thing was their loss and trust
in humanity. Really, how do you trust anyone ever again
when someone that you believed to be honest and helping
you has has swindled you for everything you've got.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
What are some of the most common reasons banks use
to deny liability.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I suppose, as it stands, banks have to refund you
if it was an unauthorized fraud, if someone's got into
your bank account or access to your credit card details
and in stolen your money. Where it becomes difficult. Where
it has become difficult is when it was an authorized fraud,
the sort of thing if it's a romance scam, or
(04:32):
if it was an investment scam, where you've been tricked
into thinking you were sending your money to a bank
for a bond investment, or helping out your lover who's
stuck on an oil rig off the coast of Alaska,
and you've sent that money yourself. In those cases, the
banks tend to deny liability unless there are really obvious
(04:53):
red flags that the banks should have picked up that
they were on notice. That the customer was being scanned
and they could have stepped down. Then they can be
taken to task by the banking on itsman. But the
cases that I've looked at, that very really happens.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So what are some of the main barriers for people
getting trying to get their money back.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Well, most of most of the time the money has
been whisked offshore, and once it goes offshore, the police
tend to throw their hands up and say, look, it's
too difficult, we don't have jurisdiction. You're on your own.
What police tend to do is go for the low
hanging fruit, which is the domestic money mules whose accounts
have been used to receive the money transfer it offseas
(05:32):
to the scammers. Those ones are a little bit easier
for police to identify and prosecute, but that leaves the
ring leaders, who are generally offshore, free just to carry
on doing what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
There's been big buildings that we've highlighted before, tucked away
on one of the floors could be one of these
scam call centers. So a lot of these scammers, especially
the bosses, they will go create side businesses with that
dirty money to make it look as if they created
a legitimate company. They're moving more towards the They call
them safehouses, where you can have a call center group
that's got one hundred scammers in it, but they're in
(06:06):
five different locations because if one location gets hit and
then the other one's shut down.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I've heard of stories of their being warehouses, of people
just in front of laptops doing this kind of thing.
I think I read about it in a sense of
romance scams, so it's obviously a huge money making business overseas. Yeah,
how what are some of the ways that people can
be I say, I guess vigilant.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
The difficulty is these people are so convincing. One persons
described it to me as being like they were wrapped
up in security blanket and the person did most of
the talking, he had answers, but every question he might
have before he'd even answered it. And people are just
disarmed and they stopped suspecting. If you're cold called, for instance,
(06:52):
you've got to be really careful. You don't know who
this person is. You better to hang up, take the
number and then go and find the agency or the
organation they're ringing from. Find them on the website and
lock them up and call them yourself and double check
person who's calling you is who they say they are.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What are some of the cases you've covered so far
this year that show that.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Things aren't necessarily improving?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Cases that I covered this year, there was a woman who
lost five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She had rung
the bank. The bank had helped her send the money
to an account at another bank, and the name of
that account was a known mule account that the bank
that was sending the money had already been on notice
(07:34):
of and was involved in a previous scam. Unfortunately, she
hasn't got any money back, and that's been invested by
the banking Onosman. Another really interesting case I've been looking
at is a fellow, a pensioner in Mount Roskill who
sent one hundred and fifty six hundred and fifty eight
thousand dollars back from his UK bank account to his
(07:56):
New Zealand whist Pac account. When he keep it in
the numbers, he made one digit mistake and the money
was sent to another account at WISPAC belonging to a
woman who gratefully received the money and never gave it back.
He in the end after our coverage was refunded by
Barclay's Bank in the UK got a full refund and
(08:17):
the woman and her partner are now before the court
accused of receiving dolen money and refusing to return it.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Several of your stories highlight cases where banks failed to
spot those glaring red flags. Are there any ways that
I guess in the last few years that they're trying harder?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yes, to be fair, the banking sector has stepped up,
partly under the threat of regulation by the government, but
they are making changes and they have implimented changes. They've
brought in confirmation of paye system where if you're sending money,
you can now check that the that the account name
that you're seeing it to matches the account that you
think it is. A lot of the people I've written about,
(09:06):
if it have been in place, they wouldn't have lost
their money. Banks have stopped sending out text messages to
customers which confuse people and they think there could be
a scam. They have introduced a system now where they
are going to start refunding authorized frauds, people who've lost
money to investment scams and the like. If the bank
has failed to meet some basic obligations, and the government's
(09:29):
just announced a new alliance between all sorts of organizations
which have skin in the game around scams, banks, telecommunication companies,
net Safe Financial Markets Authority, all of these organizations which
are now trying to share more information and stamp out
scams as they emerge, and try and prevent people losing
(09:50):
their money.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
From your investigations, what kind of preventative steps do you
believe banks should be implementing, But I guess haven't yet.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
A lot of the cases I've seen, people have made
a very unusual series of transactions which will completely at
odds to their history of banking, and I think there
needs to be better systems algorithms that pick up those
really unusual transactions and put a whole on it. Put
a bit of friction in the system. The trouble is
(10:21):
that slows things down in Customers these days want to
be able to have everything happening immediately. But personally, I
would rather take a phone call from a bank employee
and say, hey, this doesn't look right. Is this you
have you authorized this payment? Rather than lose two hundred
thousand dollars to scammers.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Well, because sometimes they do that.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
If you're like, I don't know if there's some charges
in Croatia or something, and it can see that I've
gone to count down.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yes, I had that recently, did you. Yeah, I got scammed, Yeah,
of someone. I don't know how, but someone managed to
find my bank account details and all of a sudden,
I had a series of transactions from Canada going out
out a petrol for some pharmacy and four hundred and
fifty bucks that disappeared.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
They obviously didn't know who they were dealing with, but.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
To the creatit. I raised the issue with ab ASB
looked into it, and they refunded me the money because
it was an unauthorized fraud. So I appreciated that.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah. So if I guess if there's some kind of
AI or some like algorithm like you said that says, oh,
Chelsea doesn't usually shop at hunting and fishing, but there
are I don't know. I'm just thinking of the places
where I wouldn't be usually seen.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Then something similar that would be a good idea.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Well that banks do have that, and you know, to
the credit they are investing a lot of money in
the space. They really pulled out all stops on advertising
campaigns recently to try and educate customers. But you do
get the feeling that it's a little bit too late,
certainly for a lot of the people I've written about,
And some of this might not have happened hadn't it
(11:54):
been for the government stepping in and morning they were
going to wave a big stick.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You've always thought that you would never get scammed. You're
not alone because so many people think that they're not
going to get scammed until they get scammed.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Like my colleague James's wife Michelle, what happened.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
We bought some shoes online and they were supposed to
be k Nightin's when they arrived, not Doc Martins. So
these deeny tiny things were there signs There were red
flags waving all over the show, but I said go
for it because I wanted the conversation to win.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, thinking back on all of the people that you've
spoken to, I know that each case is individual, so individual.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Are there any that stick out to your mind.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That when you're trolling through those banking ombudsman reports, which
I can only assume are very very long, and is
there anything that sticks out to you that makes you
keep going?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Everyone is different, but there's been some real tales of
heartache and a lot of tears on the phone. One
that really sticks with me is is a Spanish fellow
from Funk and a Borgia artists who's a lovely guy.
He lost a very very large sum of money when
he was swindled by I think it was the City
Bank bank scam that was going around, and when he
(13:10):
talked to me about his loss and what he'd gone
through and his family, he told me that he felt
he had failed his wife and that was really hard
to hear. Fortunately, the banking conaceman found ben Z was
at fault and he received was seventy percent refund in
that case, which was great. Like I say, a lot
of people aren't so lucky.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
What changes do you think are urgently needed in the
banking sector or even just societally.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
I suppose well.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
One thing which I know the banks are working on
is trying to share more information about know and mule accounts.
Mule accounts are people that agree to have receive money
into their account and then they are under instructions to
send it straight overseas and it makes it very difficult
for police to the track where the money's gone. Some
of these people have been tricked into into having their
(14:00):
accounts used. They might be romance victim scams. Some people
are just taking a cup and getting some money. And
I'm following several of those cases for the courts. But
there have been cases where banks have known that they
are harboring a suspect account or a suspect customer, they
haven't shared that information with other banks, and these people
(14:22):
have been able to go on open other bank accounts
and keep receiving money, and people have lost money. There
was one guy who just sold a business. He invested
the proceeds, which was a million dollars. Turned out it
was a scam. He lost a lot. The person who
received his money, although it was known because he'd flagged
it with police a victim, he was able to open
(14:42):
bank accounts to other banks and go off and steal
another eight hundred thousand dollars over the next nine months.
So better information sharing around that sort of thing would
be able to protect a lot more people and lane.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Lastly, how optimistic are you about the future of this sector?
And can New Zealand ever be known internationally as somewhere
not too.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I was going to say fudge.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
With at the moment, I'm completely paranoid. Every time I
make a bank transfer, I'm terrified I'm going to muck
up the number. I'm worried that people are going to
get into my bank account and steal more cash. And
I worry for a lot of other people out there who,
despite all the warnings, despite all the stories, are still
losing their money to scammers. At the moment. Unfortunately, New
(15:31):
Zealand is behind the eight ball when you look at
us compared to Australia and compared to the UK, for instance,
our protections are not as advanced as some of those countries.
There is work under way to bring that up to
stand it and I applaud that and I'm hopeful that
that can continue at pace so we can get up
(15:52):
and be on par with some of those countries that
we like to compare ourselves with.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Thanks for joining us, Lane, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot MZ.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
The Front Page is produced by Ethan.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our editor.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
behind the headlines.
Kiota.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Scams have
always been a hot topic. As technology gets more sophisticated,
kiwis of all ages are becoming vulnerable to falling for them.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Estimates of how much money.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
We've lost varies, though one net Safe and Global Anti
Scam Alliance report estimated over two billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Was lost last year alone.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So what has been done to try and solve this crisis?
And do banks and the government need to take more responsibility?
And Zet Herald's senior reporter Lane Nichols joins us today
on the Front Page to discuss the latest scammers and what.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Solutions there could be.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
First off, Lane, you've been covering scams and banking extensively
for years now. It feels like you've become the country's
leading journalist in this space.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
What got you into it?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Well, it was accidental, really. I was assigned a story
about a guy that had lost one hundred and thirty
six thousand dollars just disappeared from his bank account down
in South London and I got talking to him and
it really just snowball and it's one of those things
where you start writing about something and people start writing
unto you, saying the same thing happened to me, but
(01:36):
only with yeah, I just it became a bit of
a fixation in a two and a half year project since.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
You began covering this round, How has the world of scamming,
I guess evolved? So we always think about scams like
some Nigerian princes sending us an email because we've won
some money, or we've won some money and we can
send our bank details through and stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
How sophisticated are they now?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well, I mean it's constantly changing. It's a landscape that's
this ever evolving. People describe it as whackamol. You know,
one gets stamped out and then a new one springs up.
The technology aspect with AI, which is starting to come
into things. I've done stories about AI deep fakes, one
of Christopher Luxon apparently telling pensions that they should invest
(02:25):
in cryptocurrency. A woman lost two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars to it. It's incredible how skilled the scammers are
as manipulated and how talented they are at what they do.
You've moved on from things like tech scams, which you
still get people sending out malicious links that will download
software onto your computer and send all your your login details,
(02:46):
your banking back to to someone wherever they are. People
being cold called, right through to deep fakes. It's constantly changing.
Who knows what's around the corner.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
The scariest world because if your voice all your faces
on the internet, then it can potentially be used. Well.
I've heard the stories about, you know, mothers getting calls
from their kids who live overseas and it's their voice
asking her for money for an emergency.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's terrifying. How do you know what's real and what's not?
And that's only going to get harder, I would imagine
as things go forward.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
There's a huge emotional toll on victims. Obviously.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
What are some of the commonalities that you've seen through
the victims that you've spoken to.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's funny you asked that I was going back through
my dictaphone recently and listening to they to delete and
make some space, and I was listening to interview after
interview with people who had lost their life savings, listening
to what they've been through and the emotional toll, the embarrassment,
the shame, you know, the financial stress that's put them under.
(03:51):
But just the worst thing was their loss and trust
in humanity. Really, how do you trust anyone ever again
when someone that you believed to be honest and helping
you has has swindled you for everything you've got.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
What are some of the most common reasons banks use
to deny liability.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I suppose, as it stands, banks have to refund you
if it was an unauthorized fraud, if someone's got into
your bank account or access to your credit card details
and in stolen your money. Where it becomes difficult. Where
it has become difficult is when it was an authorized fraud,
the sort of thing if it's a romance scam, or
(04:32):
if it was an investment scam, where you've been tricked
into thinking you were sending your money to a bank
for a bond investment, or helping out your lover who's
stuck on an oil rig off the coast of Alaska,
and you've sent that money yourself. In those cases, the
banks tend to deny liability unless there are really obvious
(04:53):
red flags that the banks should have picked up that
they were on notice. That the customer was being scanned
and they could have stepped down. Then they can be
taken to task by the banking on itsman. But the
cases that I've looked at, that very really happens.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So what are some of the main barriers for people
getting trying to get their money back.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Well, most of most of the time the money has
been whisked offshore, and once it goes offshore, the police
tend to throw their hands up and say, look, it's
too difficult, we don't have jurisdiction. You're on your own.
What police tend to do is go for the low
hanging fruit, which is the domestic money mules whose accounts
have been used to receive the money transfer it offseas
(05:32):
to the scammers. Those ones are a little bit easier
for police to identify and prosecute, but that leaves the
ring leaders, who are generally offshore, free just to carry
on doing what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
There's been big buildings that we've highlighted before, tucked away
on one of the floors could be one of these
scam call centers. So a lot of these scammers, especially
the bosses, they will go create side businesses with that
dirty money to make it look as if they created
a legitimate company. They're moving more towards the They call
them safehouses, where you can have a call center group
that's got one hundred scammers in it, but they're in
(06:06):
five different locations because if one location gets hit and
then the other one's shut down.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I've heard of stories of their being warehouses, of people
just in front of laptops doing this kind of thing.
I think I read about it in a sense of
romance scams, so it's obviously a huge money making business overseas. Yeah,
how what are some of the ways that people can
be I say, I guess vigilant.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
The difficulty is these people are so convincing. One persons
described it to me as being like they were wrapped
up in security blanket and the person did most of
the talking, he had answers, but every question he might
have before he'd even answered it. And people are just
disarmed and they stopped suspecting. If you're cold called, for instance,
(06:52):
you've got to be really careful. You don't know who
this person is. You better to hang up, take the
number and then go and find the agency or the
organation they're ringing from. Find them on the website and
lock them up and call them yourself and double check
person who's calling you is who they say they are.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What are some of the cases you've covered so far
this year that show that.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Things aren't necessarily improving?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Cases that I covered this year, there was a woman who
lost five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She had rung
the bank. The bank had helped her send the money
to an account at another bank, and the name of
that account was a known mule account that the bank
that was sending the money had already been on notice
(07:34):
of and was involved in a previous scam. Unfortunately, she
hasn't got any money back, and that's been invested by
the banking Onosman. Another really interesting case I've been looking
at is a fellow, a pensioner in Mount Roskill who
sent one hundred and fifty six hundred and fifty eight
thousand dollars back from his UK bank account to his
(07:56):
New Zealand whist Pac account. When he keep it in
the numbers, he made one digit mistake and the money
was sent to another account at WISPAC belonging to a
woman who gratefully received the money and never gave it back.
He in the end after our coverage was refunded by
Barclay's Bank in the UK got a full refund and
(08:17):
the woman and her partner are now before the court
accused of receiving dolen money and refusing to return it.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Several of your stories highlight cases where banks failed to
spot those glaring red flags. Are there any ways that
I guess in the last few years that they're trying harder?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yes, to be fair, the banking sector has stepped up,
partly under the threat of regulation by the government, but
they are making changes and they have implimented changes. They've
brought in confirmation of paye system where if you're sending money,
you can now check that the that the account name
that you're seeing it to matches the account that you
think it is. A lot of the people I've written about,
(09:06):
if it have been in place, they wouldn't have lost
their money. Banks have stopped sending out text messages to
customers which confuse people and they think there could be
a scam. They have introduced a system now where they
are going to start refunding authorized frauds, people who've lost
money to investment scams and the like. If the bank
has failed to meet some basic obligations, and the government's
(09:29):
just announced a new alliance between all sorts of organizations
which have skin in the game around scams, banks, telecommunication companies,
net Safe Financial Markets Authority, all of these organizations which
are now trying to share more information and stamp out
scams as they emerge, and try and prevent people losing
(09:50):
their money.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
From your investigations, what kind of preventative steps do you
believe banks should be implementing, But I guess haven't yet.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
A lot of the cases I've seen, people have made
a very unusual series of transactions which will completely at
odds to their history of banking, and I think there
needs to be better systems algorithms that pick up those
really unusual transactions and put a whole on it. Put
a bit of friction in the system. The trouble is
(10:21):
that slows things down in Customers these days want to
be able to have everything happening immediately. But personally, I
would rather take a phone call from a bank employee
and say, hey, this doesn't look right. Is this you
have you authorized this payment? Rather than lose two hundred
thousand dollars to scammers.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Well, because sometimes they do that.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
If you're like, I don't know if there's some charges
in Croatia or something, and it can see that I've
gone to count down.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yes, I had that recently, did you. Yeah, I got scammed, Yeah,
of someone. I don't know how, but someone managed to
find my bank account details and all of a sudden,
I had a series of transactions from Canada going out
out a petrol for some pharmacy and four hundred and
fifty bucks that disappeared.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
They obviously didn't know who they were dealing with, but.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
To the creatit. I raised the issue with ab ASB
looked into it, and they refunded me the money because
it was an unauthorized fraud. So I appreciated that.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah. So if I guess if there's some kind of
AI or some like algorithm like you said that says, oh,
Chelsea doesn't usually shop at hunting and fishing, but there
are I don't know. I'm just thinking of the places
where I wouldn't be usually seen.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Then something similar that would be a good idea.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Well that banks do have that, and you know, to
the credit they are investing a lot of money in
the space. They really pulled out all stops on advertising
campaigns recently to try and educate customers. But you do
get the feeling that it's a little bit too late,
certainly for a lot of the people I've written about,
And some of this might not have happened hadn't it
(11:54):
been for the government stepping in and morning they were
going to wave a big stick.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You've always thought that you would never get scammed. You're
not alone because so many people think that they're not
going to get scammed until they get scammed.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Like my colleague James's wife Michelle, what happened.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
We bought some shoes online and they were supposed to
be k Nightin's when they arrived, not Doc Martins. So
these deeny tiny things were there signs There were red
flags waving all over the show, but I said go
for it because I wanted the conversation to win.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, thinking back on all of the people that you've
spoken to, I know that each case is individual, so individual.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Are there any that stick out to your mind.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That when you're trolling through those banking ombudsman reports, which
I can only assume are very very long, and is
there anything that sticks out to you that makes you
keep going?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Everyone is different, but there's been some real tales of
heartache and a lot of tears on the phone. One
that really sticks with me is is a Spanish fellow
from Funk and a Borgia artists who's a lovely guy.
He lost a very very large sum of money when
he was swindled by I think it was the City
Bank bank scam that was going around, and when he
(13:10):
talked to me about his loss and what he'd gone
through and his family, he told me that he felt
he had failed his wife and that was really hard
to hear. Fortunately, the banking conaceman found ben Z was
at fault and he received was seventy percent refund in
that case, which was great. Like I say, a lot
of people aren't so lucky.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
What changes do you think are urgently needed in the
banking sector or even just societally.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
I suppose well.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
One thing which I know the banks are working on
is trying to share more information about know and mule accounts.
Mule accounts are people that agree to have receive money
into their account and then they are under instructions to
send it straight overseas and it makes it very difficult
for police to the track where the money's gone. Some
of these people have been tricked into into having their
(14:00):
accounts used. They might be romance victim scams. Some people
are just taking a cup and getting some money. And
I'm following several of those cases for the courts. But
there have been cases where banks have known that they
are harboring a suspect account or a suspect customer, they
haven't shared that information with other banks, and these people
(14:22):
have been able to go on open other bank accounts
and keep receiving money, and people have lost money. There
was one guy who just sold a business. He invested
the proceeds, which was a million dollars. Turned out it
was a scam. He lost a lot. The person who
received his money, although it was known because he'd flagged
it with police a victim, he was able to open
(14:42):
bank accounts to other banks and go off and steal
another eight hundred thousand dollars over the next nine months.
So better information sharing around that sort of thing would
be able to protect a lot more people and lane.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Lastly, how optimistic are you about the future of this sector?
And can New Zealand ever be known internationally as somewhere
not too.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I was going to say fudge.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
With at the moment, I'm completely paranoid. Every time I
make a bank transfer, I'm terrified I'm going to muck
up the number. I'm worried that people are going to
get into my bank account and steal more cash. And
I worry for a lot of other people out there who,
despite all the warnings, despite all the stories, are still
losing their money to scammers. At the moment. Unfortunately, New
(15:31):
Zealand is behind the eight ball when you look at
us compared to Australia and compared to the UK, for instance,
our protections are not as advanced as some of those countries.
There is work under way to bring that up to
stand it and I applaud that and I'm hopeful that
that can continue at pace so we can get up
(15:52):
and be on par with some of those countries that
we like to compare ourselves with.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Thanks for joining us, Lane, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot MZ.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
The Front Page is produced by Ethan.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our editor.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
behind the headlines.
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