The ‘sickening gut punch’ when you learn you’ve been scammed

Modern scams often start with an internet search. Photo / Supplied

This year the Herald’s award-winning newsroom produced a range of first-class journalism, including investigating the state of our mental health in the Great Minds series, how NZ can rebuild stronger post-Covid with The New New Zealand and how to minimise the impact of living in an Inflation Nation.

We also tackled our literacy crisis in our Reading Block series, while dogged investigative reporting by Kate McNamara resulted in an investigation into the awarding of contracts to businesses associated with family members of Cabinet minister Nanaia Mahuta.

The following article was one of the best-read Premium articles in 2022. The story originally ran in April.

It started, as so many modern crimes do, with a Google search.

Retired New Zealand couple Sharon* and Derek* were trying to squeeze the most from their modest savings, and were shopping around for the best term deposit interest rates.

They entered their contact details into a site purporting to offer comparisons, and were soon called by someone who introduced himself as Daniel Evans, a senior compliance officer at Westpac Investments.

Evans, communicating by phone and with emails with Westpac signatures and the bank's name in the email address, suggested they look at the attractive terms on offer from his High Yield Fixed Return Emerging Market Fund. A glossy prospectus followed.

On January 26, as directed by Evans, Sharon and Derek sent $400,000 to a Westpac account in Australia. Sharon said the correlation between the bank and the investment manager gave her confidence.

"The fact it was a genuine Westpac account actually gave enormous credibility," she said.

It was mid-February when Sharon and Daniel Googled again, this time to double-check what they'd invested in.

They found that just weeks before they'd sent their life savings offshore, Westpac had issued a formal warning that its name was being spoofed and the High Yield Fixed Return Emerging Market Fund was a scam.

Sharon said the realisation she been defrauded took a few moments to dawn: "The first hit is denial and disbelief - 'this can't be happening to me!' - then that physically sickening gut punch when you realise it is happening and it's not going away and there is nothing you can do to reverse it,"

While the prospectus was slick, it had a few telling flaws. It included a letter from Westpac NZ chief executive David McLean - who had departed that role in June 2021. It also claimed investments were covered by a non-existent "New Zealand Government Guarantee".

The interest rates advertised - up to 6.9 per cent for a five-year period - were also markedly higher than those offered by other banks, including the actual Westpac which advertised only 3.7 percent over five years.

Sharon strung out her conversation with the scammers - and found their accents morphed from Australian to American - but correspondence petered out once they realised there was no prospect of getting any more money from her.

And now phone numbers previously used by the scammers have been disconnected, with the Auckland area code used by Evans found to have been puchased from a number portability site.

Emails are no longer answered. The trail of internet registration for their spoof Westpac email addresses and websites leads only to service providers who anonymise their clients. "Daniel Evans" appear to exist only as a fraudulent legend.

The scammers' origin is as yet unknown, but their ploy involves using investment comparison sites as honey pots to gather personal details which are then used to make personalised phone pitches purporting to come from banks. Official-looking documents then follow to reinforce the con, from email addresses that again appear as though they come from legitimate financial institutions.

Sharon and Derek alerted their bank, BNZ, as well as Westpac in Australia, and New Zealand police, on February 18. They were soon communicating with a Queensland detective who was tasked with managing the case.

But after two months of talking with banks and police and having been warned her money was likely long gone, Sharon still had no idea about where their funds had ended up or if there was any realistic prospect of getting any of it back.

In desperation, she contacted the Weekend Herald. She said the $400,000 loss was "life changing".

"We have accumulated that money over 40 years of walking instead of taking the bus, buying the kids clothes from garage sales. It is the accumulation of 40 years of tiny sacrifices and acts of being careful," she said.

"When that vanishes in one catastrophic hit it feels like all of those moments of 'doing without', all those hours of hard work were for nothing. All of those years: Why did I bother, why did I try, why did I care?"

The prospect of recovering funds sent offshore to scammers is vanishingly small. Jurisdictional issues complicate even well-resourced recovery efforts, and attempts to trace and freeze proceeds are almost always too slow to keep pace with money-laundering cycles.

"I've dealt with heaps of these cases and the chance of recovery is next to zero, in fact it is zero," said Daniel Toresen, of private investigation firm The Investigators.

Westpac have issued a warning that their name has been commandeered by "sophisticated" scammers who forged a prospectus and induced a retired New Zealand couple to send $400,000 offshore. Photo / NZME

Questions sent to Westpac in New Zealand and Australia by the Weekend Herald on Sharon and Derek's behalf were responded to by Mark Coxhead, their New Zealand head of financial crime.

"Getting caught up in a scam can be deeply upsetting, and we sympathise with [Sharon and Daniel] during this stressful time," Coxhead said.

The bank said it had alerted the public, and authorities, to the scam in mid-January but had found the offenders were persistent.

"While we continue to work hard to identify and shut down accounts that are created by the scammers, this is clearly a sophisticated operation and those behind it are capable of gaining access to new accounts to facilitate fraudulent transactions," Coxhead said.

"We urge customers who are concerned they may have been caught up in this scam to contact their bank so they can investigate further," he said.

He said he was aware of around a dozen people, mostly Australians, caught up in the scam. New Zealand police said Sharon and Derek were, as far as they were aware, the only New Zealand victims.

The BNZ had similar advice when approached by the Weekend Herald: "If you think you've fallen victim to a scam, get in touch with your bank as quickly as possible as we have a much better chance of recovering lost funds."

But where did this leave Sharon and Derek? Coxhead had some miraculous news.

"In this case, we're pleased to say the financial crime team at Westpac Group in Australia has recovered their funds in full, and has been working with their bank to return the money to them," he said.

Westpac this week said Sharon and Derek's money had now been sent back to New Zealand, with BNZ confirming the transfer back to the couple's accounts would soon be completed.

Private investigator Toresen is stunned at hearing of funds being recovered months after being transmitted offshore: "I've never heard of such a thing, ever, in my life," he said.

Sharon, understandably, is elated at what she describes as an "amazing and unexpected outcome" and could not thank the Weekend Herald enough.

"It reflects no glory on the banking system that we have been mired down in impenetrable banking protocol and non communication for 10 weeks, and in just three days you have been able to cut through that and make things happen. How can the system be so obtuse?" she said.

*Names have been changed to protect victims’ privacy.