Gotcha!

Psychologist and TV presenter NIGEL LATTA writes about what he learned from diving into the world of scams for his latest series.

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.

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