The following statement can be attributed to Detective Sergeant Nick Salter, Waitemata Police;
A local West Auckland firm was recently targeted by a group of international scammers who were able to scam over $800,000 with the alleged purchase of shares in an overseas mining firm.
Usually the scammers will cold call you with an offer that sounds too good to be true. They will have sourced contact details from publicly-available shareholder lists, meaning their approach is all the more convincing. The latest scam involved a company called 'Nomura Financial' based in Hong Kong and 'Lantern Mining' in China.
They have professional-looking emails and documents with corporate letterheads. They have created sophisticated webpages with photos, articles and financial advice. Links on their company webpages will even link you to media releases showing good returns and high turnover.
In reality the company web pages are fake, as are the media releases. There are web pages that allow people to create their own media and press releases to dupe seasoned investors. In some cases the scam company uses a name of a similar genuine firm and piggybacks off their name. In this case the scam firm call themselves Nomura Financial but the real company is Nomura Group, which was established in 1925.
New Zealand Investors seeking to invest in overseas shares should only used New Zealand Brokers who are bound by New Zealand Law. Brokers will be registered with the Companies Office in the Financial Service Providers Register www.fspr.govt.nz .
Consumers can check credentials for free on the website.
For further cyber security advice people can go to www.netsafe.org.nz and www.theorb.org.nz to report online incidents or concerns.
ENDS
Beth Bates/Waitemata Police