Adrian Leineweber has had a career in IT for 30 years
Online scams have cost New Zealanders tens of millions of dollars this year, with people in King Country towns targeted as much as anyone else.
That was the message Mapiu resident Adrian Leineweber, who has had a career in IT for 30 years and runs PC Solutions, gave a small group gathered for a free seminar on the subject at the Ōtorohanga Baptist Church
Adrian said every week he dealt with four or five cases of locals scammed for various amounts of money.
He shared useful tips and recommended people spend time looking at information Netsafe publishes for free on its website, on how to protect themselves.
Netsafe outlines how to deal with phishing, social media scams, invoice scams, scam calls, money and investment scams, romance and text message scams among others.
Adrian said more than $100,000 was scammed from people living in the municipal area of Taumarunui over a six-week period.
“They were not silly people, a couple of them had gone away to university, studied and been taught to analyse things logically.”
One of the victims got a call from someone who said: “Hi, we’re from your bank security and we’ve noticed a couple of strange transactions in your account, one of which is for a BMW in Sydney, and we just want to touch base to see if they are legitimate.”
Of course, the answer was no. And the caller continued, saying: “Have you got a few minutes; we had better sort this matter out before we go any further, I just want to verify who I am speaking to.”
So, he asked all the questions a bank would ask, and even got him to send through a text and got him to quote a number back – and a few minutes turned out to be talking on-and-off over about four hours, which wore Adrian’s client down as he was working at the time.
One of the many calls was used to get him to put a piece of software onto his phone, a so-called key-logger, which allowed the scammers to copy his banking passwords.
Then, they got him to log into his bank account, “just to check and see if there are any strange transactions there”.
The calls and texts continued to-and-fro, and as the victim was busy at work he began pressing “yes” every time he was asked to.
One of the times he did this, it turned out to be in reply to a text from his real bank, asking is it was okay to authorise $30,000 being moved out of his account.
“Then later that day, in the middle of the night, he woke up and said to himself, ‘Oh Crickey, what have I done’,” Adrian said.
The victim rang his bank the next morning. The money was gone, and his real bank told him to get somebody to check his phone out.
Aaron took a look and deleted a strange app purporting to be from the BNZ, and within seconds the phone rang, with the original scammer asking for more information.
“The biggest thing with scams is once the money goes offshore there is virtually zero chance of getting it back. We have very strict anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism laws in New Zealand. That’s why if you’ve ever been to a (conveyancing) lawyer recently you have to fill so much paperwork out.
“So, if you are sending a large amount of money overseas it goes into a holding account first. And their bank claims it from over there so it’s a two-step process. And this is to stop anyone having a garage sale over here to fund Al-Qaeda.”
Unfortunately, the victim Adrian was dealing with did not manage to catch his $30,000 before it left the country. But in another case, a King Country couple successfully recovered their money after sending the proceeds of a farm sale ($1 million) to a scammer impersonating their solicitor’s trust account.
This was primarily because most of the funds did not have time to leave the country due to anti money laundering laws.
