New Zealanders are being scammed at record levels. Photo / 123RF
You may not have personally gone through the awful experience of being scammed out of your life savings – but chances are someone you know may have.
Cyber scams are becoming increasingly costly for New Zealanders, with Kiwis losing $36 million in the last two years – $9m of which was lost in the last quarter, setting a new record for the biggest single quarterly loss.
NZ Herald reporter Lane Nichols has written dozens of stories about the growing problem in recent years. He told The Front Page that older people tend to be more ripe for scammers, and the sense of embarrassment that comes with falling for a scam can lead some to move on without reporting it.
“Most of the financial damage seems to be between $100 and $1000. And maybe if you’re embarrassed, you’re just willing to sort of write that off. And it’s only the really big, large ones that they’re more likely to come forward and report.”
It isn’t helping that some of the scams are becoming quite sophisticated. Recently, Nichols wrote about a pensioner in Invercargill who logged into his online banking and was surprised by what he discovered.
”[They] found that $134,000 had been moved around accounts and then transferred out to four separate banks in 11 transactions over five days. So once he realized that he reported to police and the bank, the bank looked into it, um, and they found out the scammers had somehow gone into his account.
“They…
