Simon is not a good guy. He sounds like he is over the phone, with his slightly posh English accent and his relaxed and reassuring tone, but he’s not. He’s likely in his early 30s, from a middle-class home, I’d imagine, and he almost certainly has worked in the finance sector at some point, because he has the practised patter of someone who knows the territory pretty well.
He’s telling me about interest rates for term deposits and they’re pretty good. Not so good to arouse immediate suspicion but good enough to get people’s attention. Good, but not obviously too good to be true.
I can imagine what he’s like in his real life: arrogant, unkind, callous, but not in an immediately apparent way. He’ll go out for drinks with his similarly unpleasant friends and they’ll make a lot of noise and no doubt drink flashy champagne and treat the waiters badly.
He probably fancies himself as a player, but he’s not. He’s just a bad man who steals people’s money.
Simon is obviously not his real name. He’s impersonating a real person from the actual bank he claims to be from. We found scammer Simon by googling “Term deposits New Zealand”, and the website he’s connected to came up in the first five search results. He’s likely scammed dozens of people in New Zealand in the past year. I spoke with a woman who lost $100,000 to Simon. She’s smart and she worked hard to try to verify he was legit, and still she got scammed. It was her life savings.
How much has Simon made from Kiwis alone? Probably millions. Yep, that’s right: millions.
Steal our stuff
When we set out to make a TV series about the psychology of scams, I was quite unprepared for what we’d find. It is, without doubt, one of the most sobering pieces of television I’ve made, and it’s also changed my personal behaviour online more than any other series I’ve worked on.
How prolific are scams? They are everywhere. And they are growing in scale and in complexity. How they work is pretty simple: they hijack basic human traits and use them against us ‒ traits like confidence, trust, complacency, love, optimism and fear.
All scams rely on us to do something. We have to click on a link or enter credit card details or transfer money or give away our personal information. This isn’t something the scammer can do to us; they have to do it with us. They co-opt us into the scam so that we willingly provide them with the means to steal our stuff.
We’re all vulnerable
You might think you’d never fall for a scam, but that very confidence can be your undoing. While making the series, I spoke with lots of smart people who once upon a time thought that very same thing.
Scammers are good. They should be, because they get a lot of practice. And we’re all vulnerable, as individuals and as organisations.
The thing is, most of us are busy, and if something looks legit, complacency kicks in and we tend to think it is legit. So, whether that be the text message about the parcel that couldn’t be delivered or the toll payment that’s due or your car’s registration, many of us click the link, enter the details, and we’re done.
Or we click the link in the email to the service we already subscribe to, which looks legit, and we enter our login details, or card details into the site that looks exactly like the real one.
Or we get a message from someone on social media. Or you get an invoice from a supplier you’ve dealt with for years advising of an account-number change.
Or you buy something off a website that looks like it’s all above board, only to discover that the really cheap thing you wanted was simply bait.
People think banks can get their money back. They often can’t. There are layers of bank accounts your money goes through, and in a blink, it’s gone. The money is quickly laundered by people – often Kiwis – who are either unwittingly involved in the scam, thinking they’re helping out someone they met online, or doing it without questions because they get to keep a cut.
And with the sudden explosion of AI, there will almost certainly be a consequent surge in scams as well. They’re going to get better, look better, sound better, have far better grammar and be even harder to detect.
Be careful and vigilant
So, what can we do to protect ourselves?
There’s the obvious stuff … strong passwords and multiple passwords rather than just one for everything. Good antivirus and security software on your computers and phone as well.
If you think something is up, call your bank. Immediately.
But we can also be more careful, more vigilant and less complacent. Never click on a link. Ever. For anything. If you get an email from a service you use, don’t click it. Independently go to the actual website, log in and check things out from there.
Most of all, though, call someone. If anything changes, then call the provider using a number you have independently verified. If someone you deal with all the time sends you an email to tell you the bank account number for payments has changed, then call an actual human in the actual place and verify that this is all legit.
And if that person you’re involved with online – who usually works either on an oil rig or in the US military – asks you for a gift card so they can buy their kids food, or get medicine for Grandma, don’t send it. They don’t love you. They’re stealing from you.
No one from the bank is ever going to ask you for any login details or codes. Ever.
And if you do get scammed, call your bank and call the police.
Which brings us back to Simon. He eventually hung up on me after I was pushing him about verifying that he was legit. He got snippy and said he didn’t need my money and hung up.
I called him back and left a message. I said that I don’t know how he does this … stealing people’s money. I said if his mum knew, I’m sure she’d be very disappointed in her little boy. I also said if he wanted to talk about changing careers and doing something that didn’t involve hurting people, he should call me back.
To date, Simon has not returned my call.
You’ve Been Scammed, four episodes from Monday, July 3, TVNZ 1, 8.00pm and TVNZ+.
