Staying alert for financial scams

Financial scams are on the rise. Last year Kiwis lost a record $20 million in financial scams according to CERT NZ, this was 19% more than the previous year.

Because of the rise in scams across NZ, psychologist Nigel Latta created a TV series about scams titled You’ve Been Scammed. This provides insight into different types of scams and can be streamed on TVNZ+. We recommend you give it a watch!

SCP has always been aware of financial scams and investment fraud. We first highlighted how to avoid investment fraud and scams in a blog back in April 2020, with an update in March.

Top tips for identifying potential online scams

Scammers use multiple tactics to trick you into believing them. This could include pretending to be from a legitimate company or offering a fake investment opportunity.

• Never click on a link sent to you by text or email asking for payment. Always go directly to the company website by typing it in your browser or call them directly. Some scammers may also call you pretending to be someone else. If it seems suspicious, hang up and call the actual company back and ask if they called you for information.
• Check the sender’s email address. There are a few tricks to figuring out if the sender is legitimate by looking at their email address. These include seeing if it matches the usual company format, checking for spelling mistakes that make it look almost real, and seeing if it actually has the company name in the email.
• Look at spelling and grammar errors within the email. Some scammers will make small mistakes or use strange wording within the emails themselves. If it doesn’t make sense or is hard to understand, report it as spam.

The Department of Internal Affairs publishes the latest text and email scams on its website here. Recently scammers have pretended to be from NZ Post, Waka Kotahi, banks, and IRD among many others.

What to do if you think you’ve been caught out

If you think a message you receive is a scam, report it to one of the organisations mentioned below, delete it, or mark it as spam. If you receive a message that sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

Scammers know they need to be clever in how they approach you for money. This means you’ve got to know how to protect yourself and where to go if you do get caught out by a scam. The below resources offer great tools and support:

• Netsafe is New Zealand’s independent, non-profit online safety charity. It provides free and confidential advice, 7 days a week.
• Department of Internal Affairs publishes guides on how to recognise a Scam or Phishing attempt, and how to report one on their website.
• CERT supports organisations and individuals affected by cyber security incidents, and provides trusted information and advice.

How SCP communicates with investors

We will never text or email you to verify your bank account with us, as we already have this on file for you.

If you need to change your bank account, you should send it via email to investments@scpartners.co.nz after which we’ll ask for verification. All investor bank account change requests are always confirmed verbally via phone by one of the SCP team.

Additionally, SCP has no plans to change our trust bank account. We’ll never text or email you with a change of SCP’s bank account. You can verify our bank account details by viewing the Contact Us page on the Investor Portal.

If in any doubt about any communications you receive from us, please do not hesitate to call the office on 09 535 22369.