By Julie Haggie
A gutter guy
In February 2025 Dean McAuley knocked on a 91-year-old Auckland woman's door and offered to clean her gutters for $800. Over the next 33 days he called or texted her 194 times, collecting cash for brushes, for "special liquid", for car repairs and for food, until her bank account was empty – around $10,000.
Dean McAuley has 38 previous convictions for near-identical offending against elderly women over 15 years. The sum was small by national standards. The harm was not.
A criminal poser
While serving a sentence in South Auckland Hayden Gobey rang NZ Transport Agency staff on a police-only number, posing as a constable or detective. He gained the driver licence numbers, addresses and contact details of 26 strangers, then used credit check details to break into online banking and RealMe accounts.
Once released, he drained $178,000 from an elderly couple's savings. Gobey had 81 previous dishonesty convictions. The elderly couple who lost $178,000 to Gobey got most of it back from their bank, but not their peace of mind. "This crime has taken away our sense of safety, independence and peace of mind." Distrust ran through all 15 victim impact statements read in that case.
Scams are the main form of fraud
Most of the people stealing from New Zealanders will never be named, because they work from overseas, behind fake websites, spoofed phone numbers and AI-written emails. The faces that do reach court are usually the local links in the chain, operating as money mules to enable money to flow through a New Zealand bank to an offshore syndicate.
A Whangārei health worker lost his family's $330,000 in a Citibank-branded scam over just 12 days. Police later linked the local account that received his money to five other victims and $1.25 million in losses. Others use deepfakes: one pensioner lost $224,000 after seeing a fabricated investment endorsement from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Cumulatively, New Zealanders reported losing $265 million to scams through their bank accounts in a single year, and that is only the money people told their banks about. The figure comes from MBIE's first Reported Fraud Monitor, compiled by Payments NZ from 12 banks for the 12 months to October 2025. Almost half of it - $126 million - came from authorised payment scams, where victims are talked into sending the money themselves. The other $139 million was taken without the account holder's knowledge, using stolen logins or card details.
Surveys suggest the real toll is far higher. Netsafe and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimate New Zealanders lost $3 billion to scams in 2025, up 30% on 2024, with 72% of adults encountering a scam. $3 billion is about how much individuals, trusts and charities give to New Zealand causes each year.
Five scam trends stand out:
- AI is making scams harder to spot. Kordia's 2026 business report found more than 80% of phishing emails now contain AI-generated content, and fake celebrity and politician endorsements are common.
- Scammers are hiding inside channels people trust. Gen's half-year report found malicious remote access incidents in New Zealand rose 73%, tech support scams 27%, and "scam-yourself" attacks, where people are tricked into installing harmful software, 45%. Examples include scams sent through a real hotel booking platform and hijacked WhatsApp accounts.
- Fake bankers. In August, 34% of the impersonation scams reported to Netsafe involved a bank or financial institution, up from 20% between April and July.
- Scams in everyday places. The NCSC's latest report warns about QR code phishing after incidents involving Christchurch parking meters.
- The system is fighting back. Since 30 November 2025, banks have offered Confirmation of Payee and may reimburse authorised payment scam losses up to $500,000 when they fall short of their commitments. A pilot between banks, telcos and Trade Me blocked more than 23,000 malicious domains in six months, saving an estimated $23.8 million.
The victims: busy people
Scam victims are rarely careless. They are usually busy, stressed, or trusting someone who seemed legitimate, and the scammers choose that moment deliberately. A Waikato couple paid $154,000 into a bank account for the next tranche on their new home build, only to find the builder’s email had been hacked. A Whanganui woman lost $350,000 in a Citibank-branded investment scam while her husband was critically ill in hospital.
Businesses: the invisible scammer in the inbox
For businesses, the most costly fraud is business email compromise. A criminal gets into a real email account, watches the invoices go back and forth, then sends a convincing message with new bank details at exactly the right time. The National Cyber Security Centre said this drove a record quarter of reported losses, $12.4 million, between July and September 2025. This included an individual loss of $1.7 million mean for a company capital raise. Small businesses are also at high risk. The Banking Ombudsman has seen an average of 80 scam cases a month, with average losses of $80,000. Fraudsters also pose as bank fraud teams to trick business owners into sharing their logins.
Identity fraud is just as widespread. Christchurch software company Lumin surveyed 1,000 business decision-makers in New Zealand, Australia and the US. It found 55% of New Zealand organisations had been hit by identity fraud in the past year, at an average cost of $2.2 million each. Nine in ten believe the way they sign and verify documents is vulnerable to AI-driven fraud such as deepfakes.
The victims are real, trust is damaged, business confidence and reputation are impaired. We need vigilance, constant reminders and systems providing levels of protection.
