Dodgy sites guaranteed to attract unlimited interest

By PAUL PANCKHURST


Unlimited profits. * Act now. Earn millions. Perfectly legal. Guaranteed return, guaranteed safe. Too good to be missed.

If your website contains those words, you might have had an unexpected visitor this week.

The Securities Commission went "surfing for scammers" on Tuesday.

Director of enforcement Norman Miller said four staff each spent about six hours surfing through New Zealand and overseas websites, looking for investment scams.

Securities regulators in Australia, Canada, India, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China also took part in the exercise - a project of the Asia Pacific regional committee of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission co-ordinated the exercise - and also provided a list of words to plug into search engines.

Miller said it was too early to say if any scams were uncovered by the New Zealand agency.

A similar exercise previously turned up "one or two forestry schemes" that did not appear to have the required offer documents.

A Google search yesterday on one of the terms on the surf list, "prime bank instrument", had a result to warm the heart of any regulator.

The top result: a Serious Fraud Office warning on the topic of the mythical "prime bank" market, claimed by fraudsters to offer enormous profits to elite investors.