October 9, 2025 • 14 mins
International rings operating scams are on the increase in Aotearoa and Australia, and many of us will come across scammers in our daily lives. In this short video we explore the motivation and tactics of scammers, the different phases of a scam (and how you can be sucked in) plus the red flags many of us miss. Key takeaways include recognizing urgency, secrecy, and mismatched information requests as signs of scams, and knowing what steps to take if you or someone you know has been scammed.
Investing involves risk. Be mindful of scams asking for your login info or offering unsolicited investment advice, especially on social media. For more information see https://intercom.help/sharesies/en/articles/2348225-security-and-internet-safety
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Cura.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm Helen from Chezy's and I'm here with Pa, our
security manager, to talk about scams. Scammers are catching lots
of New Zealanders out, so we thought we'd look at
the psyche of a scammer, some of the red flags
that we all miss and what to do with you
or someone you know get scammed. Hi, Pier, good to
have you in the studio.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Well thanks for having me in.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
With scammers, what is the psyche? What's the behavior behind
their motivation and the behaviors that they exhibit toward unsuspecting people.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I think the psyche of a scammer is ultimately rooted
in financial gain, but beneath that, there's a lot of
things going on. You're depending on the type of scam
and the type of person you're dealing with. Often people
involved in scams are part of very large networks and
very complex kind of scam infrastructure, so to speak. Very
(00:56):
often the people you're talking about are you talking to
or chatting whether or who are called cold calling you
and things like that, are actually people coming from a
place of desperation. Sometimes they are victims themselves. They might
be stuck in a debt track or something like that
where they've got no choice but to your continue with
the activity. And other times they don't actually know they're
(01:17):
involved in a scam. As far as they're aware, they've
got a legitimate outbound call center role or your sales
role to refer people into the depths of a scam network.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
They are just how sophisticated are these scam rings?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Incredibly sophisticated and incredibly well funded. So generally you have
you're at the top level international crime syndicate, you're involved
who do a lot of the planning and set up
a lot of the infrastructure and provide a lot of
the technology for scams to take place. And then a
lot of the kind of legwork and the scam behavior
(01:58):
that the public see is actually like outsourced across the world,
particularly in third world countries where people may not have
a better choice for an income.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
What are the phases of being scammed right from the
very beginning to the end, would you say, so.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Let's talk about the kind of initial phase of a scam.
This is a phase where scammers tend to cast a
very wide net. It's quite rare that they're targeting individuals.
At this point. You imagine yourself going about your ordinary business.
You might see a post on social media that's you're
making an offer you can't refuse. You things in your
(02:36):
email inbox. You know they have a really strong sense
of urgency about them, that you have a call to action,
that you need to action then and there without thinking
about it too much further. And these will inevitably have
the goal of putting you in contact with a scammer
who will communicate with you and bring a person deeper
into the scam.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
What would be the second phase of a scam.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Once you've made contact with the scammer, it's all about
building trust and rapport from their side. Obviously, you're a
lot of people are aware that scams happen. We see
communications day in day out about how to protect ourselves
from scams, and so scammers have to socially engineer their
way around the kind of your internal suspicion that we maintain.
(03:24):
And so at that point you start seeing that kind
of foot in the door pattern or the escalating yeses
where they'll make really small, innocuous asks of a person
and slowly ramp up those asks. So no request from
a scammer feels like very much bigger than the last request,
but actually after ten or so requests, you know they're
(03:44):
asking for your much larger things. At that point, the
scam is if someone's being roped in. These scammers have
kind of generated a lead, and very often they'll rely
on something like triangulation where they bring in a third person,
their manager or their special advisor, who not only is
(04:07):
it an appeal to authority, but it's also putting you
in a position where you're really privileged to kind of
have that time with them, right and often you're in
the case of things like investment scams, it's on the
basis of, oh, we're giving you this free advice for
a very limited time, so you better make the most
of that, or you miss out on your returns or
(04:31):
potentially you won't get to be part of their special
advice program or whatever the case may be. And it's
also at that stage an opportunity for them to triarge victims. Obviously,
if in their communications of victims indicated that they have
a high net worth or they have a lot of
money to it, or that they could potentially spend, then
(04:53):
they're likely to get referred to a higher performing manager
to try and convert that into income. For the scam,
the other things. You'll notice that that kind of second
stage is very often someone will get pulled into a
group chat. There'll be lots of people in there, people
talking really positively, maybe about the returns of the scam
and things like that, but most of those people are
(05:17):
going to be plants by the scammers you're to convince
you give you that kind of sense of safety that
a bunch of other people are benefiting from it. Once
you get into that kind of interaction with the kind
of scam manager or where you're at the point where
they're trying to actually execute the scam and get you
to do the thing that takes them to the angle,
whether that's providing bank account can't details, credentials, transferring funds,
(05:43):
you're investing in a specific instrument. In the case of
investment scam, there's generally a shift in behavior with these scammers.
You're no longer in a position where they're being nice
to you and giving you all this great advice and
kind of trying to rip you in this kind of
almost sinister feedback loop of when when you do the
(06:05):
things they ask, they're very very kind to you and
and very praising, But when you're non compliant, they'll often
be quite cruel, and that's that kind of cult like
behavioral loop where you get conditioned to doing the things
that make them happy, even though effectively they're a stranger
(06:25):
on the internet. Once a scam is kind of executed
on whatever its initial goal is, very often either they
go into like a cover up phase. You're maybe there
was a pump and dump scam, and they go, oh, no,
there wasn't a pump and dump, but you know, there's
these malicious people on the market short selling our stock.
(06:50):
We're sorry that you're falling victim to that. You know,
we're going to do the best we can to make
things right. Or sometimes they will just fall silent. You'll
get blocked. You the money, he's gone, they don't care
about you anymore. But also sometimes they will take the
turn of oh, you know, we're very sorry you lost money.
We can help compensate you, and then kind of bring
(07:15):
you back into the fold of complying with them and
participating further in their scam and losing out a bit more.
And though that kind of stuff we see more and
more of now, where not only is it happening from
the scam is someone's initially interacting with. But people are
searching online on social media. You're on Reddit, You're wherever
(07:37):
they go for information like what can I do? How
can I get my money back? And then they see ah,
like join this WhatsApp group, which is a group for
victims of this specific scam, you know, to get help.
We're going to put together a class action lawsuit or
you know, whatever they kind of framing they put around
it might be. And then immediately people get pulled back
(08:02):
into a secondary scam of oh, we can recover your money,
but it requires a fee, or we can only refund
to your credit card or your wise accounts, so we
need those details to refund to it, and things like that,
and all along this way, they're farming information from you
because your information has value, and at the same time,
(08:24):
they're overloading you with information to the point where, oh,
this system I'm interacting with is so complex that I
can't handle it by myself, and I must need these
people to help me. Sinister, sinister, indeed, pey, what are
some of the.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Red flags that many of us miss when it comes
to scamming.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think, like we have you know, there's been a
lot of scam education over the years, right, and some
of the your common red flags we talk about is
that kind of sense of urgence. See, you know, if
you don't engage with us now, you might miss out
on your incredible returns, on a refund that you're apparently owed,
(09:10):
you're on things like that, or you're in other cases,
there's a sense of urgency around if you don't respond
to us, you might be in like legal trouble and
things like that. There's nearly always a sense of secrecy,
and it's kind of interesting in some of the widest
bread scams now where we see things like group chats
(09:31):
and that, because there's like this balance of scammers want
to recruit more people into the scam, and you know,
your friends and family maybe they want these unrealistic returns too.
But on the flip side, you can't tell too many people.
There's only limited spaces. You're like, don't broadcast this too
(09:52):
far because or or else will run out of spaces
and you won't get whatever you'uring goal is here, and
you're the reason they're so secretive like that, And why
there's always this sense of exclusivity is purely because if
you tell enough people about it, someone will tell you
it's a scam, and like the reality is as well.
(10:13):
Between the kind of first and last stages of most scams,
you're from that initial phishing, email, social media, ad impersonating
someone or something like that, you're you go into the
second stage, which feels really unrelated to the first part.
(10:34):
You're for example, well, when ad impersonating a company, you
might interact with that and then get routed to a
group chat which claims to be from somewhere else entirely,
and that should be a red flag right there. Another
really big red flag you're when you are dealing with
(10:56):
someone claiming to be an organization is when they're asking
you for information that that organization should already have about you,
or even requesting things like screenshots.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
What would you say people can do if they have
been scammed or actually someone they know who and they're
close to, who's been scammed and is obviously pretty upset
with having lost whatever it might be.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So I think for individuals who feel like they've beformen
victim of a scam, your first priority is if you
have given over any account information and things like that,
is to resecure your accounts. You change your password enable
multi factor authentication and things like that, and then reach
(11:40):
out to the organization you're in question. So, for example,
if your chasy's count account was involved, we'd really like
to know about it so that we can help keep
you safe. In the case of your people whose fat
friends or famamily members might be scammed, it can get
(12:02):
really tricky really quickly. The reality of your modern scams
and the kind of dark psychology that exists in that
space is the longer someone is engaged with scammers, the
more brainwashed in the sense they are, and the more
kind of attached to the scam they become, and they
(12:26):
developed this kind of idea of some cost where if
they just engage with it more, maybe they'll get that
or whatever they've lost so far back and they don't
want to lose that hope. I think the best bit
in some circumstances is if you know what accounts are involved,
(12:46):
or if it's with your bank, if it's with another platform,
you're reaching out to them and fearing, hey, I think
my family members being scammed, Like you're an organization, well
often be able to share information you're to you, but
they will be able to investigate and have a look
and help support your support that person. And of course
(13:08):
if you are quite concerned about your someone's behavior, like
the kind of them concealing what they're doing with money
and things, and you think they might be engaged with
a scam, the police can also support with.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
That thanks peer. Three takeaways about scamming. One would be
if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,
so stop while you're ahead. The second thing is if
you're talking to an organization that should have your information already,
that's a red flag. They won't be asking you for
(13:42):
it because, as I say, they should have had it already.
And thirdly, if you're contacted by an organization that's been
you think impersonated, check with the organizations and the verified
channels to see in fact if it is a scam
or not.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
From seven St
Cura.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm Helen from Chezy's and I'm here with Pa, our
security manager, to talk about scams. Scammers are catching lots
of New Zealanders out, so we thought we'd look at
the psyche of a scammer, some of the red flags
that we all miss and what to do with you
or someone you know get scammed. Hi, Pier, good to
have you in the studio.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Well thanks for having me in.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
With scammers, what is the psyche? What's the behavior behind
their motivation and the behaviors that they exhibit toward unsuspecting people.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I think the psyche of a scammer is ultimately rooted
in financial gain, but beneath that, there's a lot of
things going on. You're depending on the type of scam
and the type of person you're dealing with. Often people
involved in scams are part of very large networks and
very complex kind of scam infrastructure, so to speak. Very
(00:56):
often the people you're talking about are you talking to
or chatting whether or who are called cold calling you
and things like that, are actually people coming from a
place of desperation. Sometimes they are victims themselves. They might
be stuck in a debt track or something like that
where they've got no choice but to your continue with
the activity. And other times they don't actually know they're
(01:17):
involved in a scam. As far as they're aware, they've
got a legitimate outbound call center role or your sales
role to refer people into the depths of a scam network.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
They are just how sophisticated are these scam rings?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Incredibly sophisticated and incredibly well funded. So generally you have
you're at the top level international crime syndicate, you're involved
who do a lot of the planning and set up
a lot of the infrastructure and provide a lot of
the technology for scams to take place. And then a
lot of the kind of legwork and the scam behavior
(01:58):
that the public see is actually like outsourced across the world,
particularly in third world countries where people may not have
a better choice for an income.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
What are the phases of being scammed right from the
very beginning to the end, would you say, so.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Let's talk about the kind of initial phase of a scam.
This is a phase where scammers tend to cast a
very wide net. It's quite rare that they're targeting individuals.
At this point. You imagine yourself going about your ordinary business.
You might see a post on social media that's you're
making an offer you can't refuse. You things in your
(02:36):
email inbox. You know they have a really strong sense
of urgency about them, that you have a call to action,
that you need to action then and there without thinking
about it too much further. And these will inevitably have
the goal of putting you in contact with a scammer
who will communicate with you and bring a person deeper
into the scam.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
What would be the second phase of a scam.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Once you've made contact with the scammer, it's all about
building trust and rapport from their side. Obviously, you're a
lot of people are aware that scams happen. We see
communications day in day out about how to protect ourselves
from scams, and so scammers have to socially engineer their
way around the kind of your internal suspicion that we maintain.
(03:24):
And so at that point you start seeing that kind
of foot in the door pattern or the escalating yeses
where they'll make really small, innocuous asks of a person
and slowly ramp up those asks. So no request from
a scammer feels like very much bigger than the last request,
but actually after ten or so requests, you know they're
(03:44):
asking for your much larger things. At that point, the
scam is if someone's being roped in. These scammers have
kind of generated a lead, and very often they'll rely
on something like triangulation where they bring in a third person,
their manager or their special advisor, who not only is
(04:07):
it an appeal to authority, but it's also putting you
in a position where you're really privileged to kind of
have that time with them, right and often you're in
the case of things like investment scams, it's on the
basis of, oh, we're giving you this free advice for
a very limited time, so you better make the most
of that, or you miss out on your returns or
(04:31):
potentially you won't get to be part of their special
advice program or whatever the case may be. And it's
also at that stage an opportunity for them to triarge victims. Obviously,
if in their communications of victims indicated that they have
a high net worth or they have a lot of
money to it, or that they could potentially spend, then
(04:53):
they're likely to get referred to a higher performing manager
to try and convert that into income. For the scam,
the other things. You'll notice that that kind of second
stage is very often someone will get pulled into a
group chat. There'll be lots of people in there, people
talking really positively, maybe about the returns of the scam
and things like that, but most of those people are
(05:17):
going to be plants by the scammers you're to convince
you give you that kind of sense of safety that
a bunch of other people are benefiting from it. Once
you get into that kind of interaction with the kind
of scam manager or where you're at the point where
they're trying to actually execute the scam and get you
to do the thing that takes them to the angle,
whether that's providing bank account can't details, credentials, transferring funds,
(05:43):
you're investing in a specific instrument. In the case of
investment scam, there's generally a shift in behavior with these scammers.
You're no longer in a position where they're being nice
to you and giving you all this great advice and
kind of trying to rip you in this kind of
almost sinister feedback loop of when when you do the
(06:05):
things they ask, they're very very kind to you and
and very praising, But when you're non compliant, they'll often
be quite cruel, and that's that kind of cult like
behavioral loop where you get conditioned to doing the things
that make them happy, even though effectively they're a stranger
(06:25):
on the internet. Once a scam is kind of executed
on whatever its initial goal is, very often either they
go into like a cover up phase. You're maybe there
was a pump and dump scam, and they go, oh, no,
there wasn't a pump and dump, but you know, there's
these malicious people on the market short selling our stock.
(06:50):
We're sorry that you're falling victim to that. You know,
we're going to do the best we can to make
things right. Or sometimes they will just fall silent. You'll
get blocked. You the money, he's gone, they don't care
about you anymore. But also sometimes they will take the
turn of oh, you know, we're very sorry you lost money.
We can help compensate you, and then kind of bring
(07:15):
you back into the fold of complying with them and
participating further in their scam and losing out a bit more.
And though that kind of stuff we see more and
more of now, where not only is it happening from
the scam is someone's initially interacting with. But people are
searching online on social media. You're on Reddit, You're wherever
(07:37):
they go for information like what can I do? How
can I get my money back? And then they see ah,
like join this WhatsApp group, which is a group for
victims of this specific scam, you know, to get help.
We're going to put together a class action lawsuit or
you know, whatever they kind of framing they put around
it might be. And then immediately people get pulled back
(08:02):
into a secondary scam of oh, we can recover your money,
but it requires a fee, or we can only refund
to your credit card or your wise accounts, so we
need those details to refund to it, and things like that,
and all along this way, they're farming information from you
because your information has value, and at the same time,
(08:24):
they're overloading you with information to the point where, oh,
this system I'm interacting with is so complex that I
can't handle it by myself, and I must need these
people to help me. Sinister, sinister, indeed, pey, what are
some of the.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Red flags that many of us miss when it comes
to scamming.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think, like we have you know, there's been a
lot of scam education over the years, right, and some
of the your common red flags we talk about is
that kind of sense of urgence. See, you know, if
you don't engage with us now, you might miss out
on your incredible returns, on a refund that you're apparently owed,
(09:10):
you're on things like that, or you're in other cases,
there's a sense of urgency around if you don't respond
to us, you might be in like legal trouble and
things like that. There's nearly always a sense of secrecy,
and it's kind of interesting in some of the widest
bread scams now where we see things like group chats
(09:31):
and that, because there's like this balance of scammers want
to recruit more people into the scam, and you know,
your friends and family maybe they want these unrealistic returns too.
But on the flip side, you can't tell too many people.
There's only limited spaces. You're like, don't broadcast this too
(09:52):
far because or or else will run out of spaces
and you won't get whatever you'uring goal is here, and
you're the reason they're so secretive like that, And why
there's always this sense of exclusivity is purely because if
you tell enough people about it, someone will tell you
it's a scam, and like the reality is as well.
(10:13):
Between the kind of first and last stages of most scams,
you're from that initial phishing, email, social media, ad impersonating
someone or something like that, you're you go into the
second stage, which feels really unrelated to the first part.
(10:34):
You're for example, well, when ad impersonating a company, you
might interact with that and then get routed to a
group chat which claims to be from somewhere else entirely,
and that should be a red flag right there. Another
really big red flag you're when you are dealing with
(10:56):
someone claiming to be an organization is when they're asking
you for information that that organization should already have about you,
or even requesting things like screenshots.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
What would you say people can do if they have
been scammed or actually someone they know who and they're
close to, who's been scammed and is obviously pretty upset
with having lost whatever it might be.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So I think for individuals who feel like they've beformen
victim of a scam, your first priority is if you
have given over any account information and things like that,
is to resecure your accounts. You change your password enable
multi factor authentication and things like that, and then reach
(11:40):
out to the organization you're in question. So, for example,
if your chasy's count account was involved, we'd really like
to know about it so that we can help keep
you safe. In the case of your people whose fat
friends or famamily members might be scammed, it can get
(12:02):
really tricky really quickly. The reality of your modern scams
and the kind of dark psychology that exists in that
space is the longer someone is engaged with scammers, the
more brainwashed in the sense they are, and the more
kind of attached to the scam they become, and they
(12:26):
developed this kind of idea of some cost where if
they just engage with it more, maybe they'll get that
or whatever they've lost so far back and they don't
want to lose that hope. I think the best bit
in some circumstances is if you know what accounts are involved,
(12:46):
or if it's with your bank, if it's with another platform,
you're reaching out to them and fearing, hey, I think
my family members being scammed, Like you're an organization, well
often be able to share information you're to you, but
they will be able to investigate and have a look
and help support your support that person. And of course
(13:08):
if you are quite concerned about your someone's behavior, like
the kind of them concealing what they're doing with money
and things, and you think they might be engaged with
a scam, the police can also support with.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
That thanks peer. Three takeaways about scamming. One would be
if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,
so stop while you're ahead. The second thing is if
you're talking to an organization that should have your information already,
that's a red flag. They won't be asking you for
(13:42):
it because, as I say, they should have had it already.
And thirdly, if you're contacted by an organization that's been
you think impersonated, check with the organizations and the verified
channels to see in fact if it is a scam
or not.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
From seven St
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