I got scammed like Team NZ – Keenan

An Auckland sailmaker has revealed he was scammed out of $30,000 in a copycat method to Team New Zealand losing around $1 million.

Rodney Keenan, who runs Evolution Sails which has international clients and suppliers, had a wry chuckle and plenty of sympathy when he heard of Team New Zealand’s loss this week.

The America’s Cup syndicate were tricked into sending their money to a Hungarian bank account to cover a broadcasting deal, when they failed to notice an extra dot in the email address and didn’t raise immediate concerns over the new banking details.

Keenan got on to the trail of his lost money within 90 minutes but by then it was already too late.

‘‘It’s long gone now, there’s no getting it back,’’ Keenan told Stuff of the fraud that hit him in 2017.

‘‘It was exactly the same . . . it’s a scam that has been around for a while and I will say, they are bloody good at it.

‘‘I wasn’t overly embarrassed when it happened because I realised how good they were at doing it, they have got it down to a fine art.

‘‘They hack into people’s emails, they watch invoices going out and they set up an account in that exact same name.’’

Keenan said his office administrator informed him that a bill had been paid to a regular South African client, but they had changed their bank account to an American one.

That raised his suspicions, though he felt it plausible, as the South African outfit did a lot of business in the US and some of their core materials came from there.

When he checked the email address ‘‘something didn’t look quite right’’ and he spotted the extra dot added into it.

‘‘I smelt a rat,’’ he said but got no joy from his New Zealand bank who seemed to place the blame on him.