The rise of romance scamming

Fraudsters who target people’s hearts to get their cash make saddest cases

Even the head of Netsafe can’t escape the tentacles of the scammers. “Yes, I’ve been scammed,” says chief executive Brent Carey. “I had to cancel my credit card after a transaction. I did some online shopping and, yeah, it was a scam. Luckily, I was able to get it reversed!”

As head of Netsafe, Carey runs the country’s biggest scam-reporting centre — now receiving 15,000 reports of scams a year. The numbers are rising by about 25 per cent a year.

And while scammers target the savings of innocent victims, it’s the ones who also target people’s hearts that cause some of the worst hurt.

“The romance scams are doubleedged because it’s money plus emotion and they are becoming more sophisticated as well,” says Carey.

According to Netsafe, romance scams have increased by 9.6 per cent over the past two years.

In the two years to March 12, 645 romance scams have been reported, totalling lost money of $4.54 million. Six out of 10 victims were women. Data shows the number of romance scams in Wellington, Auckland, Waikato, Nelson, West Coast, Marlborough and ManawatuWanganui are all over-indexed on a per-capita basis. Taranaki, Canterbury and Otago are the three lowest-indexed regions.

Carey says romance scams can be difficult for wider family members who might spot something is up.

“It’s hard to know how as a family you challenge someone that their love may be real but their lover may not be. So how do you intervene?

“They [the scammers] are social engineering these people — a lot of them don’t have their accounts locked down from a privacy and security setting. And so the person is led to believe that they are who they say they are, and that they are genuinely interested romantically. And that’s the sorry part of those romance scams.

“Because when it all becomes obvious that this is a scam, people feel incredible shame. There’s a big counselling and mental health element to what we do in those types of scams.”

Meanwhile, Carey said, sextortion was at epidemic levels, with an 88 per cent increase in complaints to Netsafe. Police, he said, were receiving about 50 cases a week.

Victims were generally younger and were being blackmailed for content or money.

Young boys were actually being targeted the most, he said.

They were being blackmailed for money after sending the likes of nude images to who they thought — generally speaking — were young women. The “young women” turn out to be scammers and threaten to release the images unless paid. “It’s an impersonation scam.” Carey’s advice?

“This is organised crime often and the main thing is to try and pause — stop engaging with the scammer. Often they don’t follow through, they move on to the next victim. This is a numbers game. Contact Netsafe so that we can talk about their privacy and security settings that are applied, how to block someone, how to block that contact. Obviously, we’re working with parents and young people, and talking to parents about their safety settings.”

Speaking more generally, Carey says scams are being under-reported by New Zealanders. A survey by Netsafe and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (Gasa) puts the total figure lost by Kiwis at more than $2 billion.

The two organisations describe scams as “one of the most pressing challenges of our time”.

“Beyond the financial repercussions, scams erode trust, inflict emotional trauma and undermine the very fabric of our digital society,” says Gasa managing director Jorij Abraham.

A survey of Kiwis reveals scams are on the rise. “Over half witnessed a rise in scams over the past year, emphasising the growing threat.”

Seventeen per cent of the survey’s 1000 respondents had been scammed, losing an average of $3165.

“I was shocked at how high the average was that each New Zealander was losing,” says Carey. “Three grand is quite a lot for the average Kiwi to lose in the cost of living crisis — and that’s only the ones . . . reported.”

Carey also says there’s a misconception that it’s just elderly people being scammed.

He and a Netsafe team attended the recent O Week at Otago University and were surprised to find that students were worried about scams the most when it came to online.

“It’s interesting because you think, ‘Oh, they’re digital natives’. But [they say], ‘No we’re being scammed on [Facebook] Marketplace, we’re being scammed for counterfeit goods. We’re in online shopping and we’re being scammed there’.

“It was good to challenge that scam persona that we build up . . . it affects everyone.”

It’s hard to know how as a family you challenge someone that their love may be real but their lover may not be.

Brent Carey, Netsafe