A still from The Man with a Thousand Faces, which will show at the Fraud Film Festival in Wellington. Photo: Supplied
The Wellington Fraud Film Festival will showcase a collection of documentaries covering all types of deceptions. It is a topic that's become increasingly relatable for New Zealanders.
Next Monday in Wellington, some 150 people will fill the Roxy Cinema for a niche documentary film festival. But they will not be the usual film festival crowd of movie buffs - they'll be lawyers, police officers, bankers, and anyone else whose work deals with scams or fraud.
The Fraud Film Festival, an offshoot of the original version of the festival in the Netherlands, has been running in New Zealand since 2016. On the surface, it seems extremely specialised. But in reality, fraud is something that touches most people - a BNZ survey last year found that 87 percent of New Zealanders were targeted by scams in the 12 months prior.
And for the Fraud Film Festival's programmer and producer Steve Newall, fraud covers a wider range than just consumer scams.
"Once you kind of zoom back from the specifics of scams or individuals committing fraud-related crimes, you start to think that so many documentaries contain a kind of fraud of one kind or another.
"I think we sort of stretch [the parameters] a couple of interesting ways in this year's programme. Romance scams are definitely on the rise -we've seen a lot of public outreach by banks and other fraud prevention outfits in recent years, but it's still something that has a much more personal impact that's a little bit removed from the financial or even the criminal."
At this year's festival, there will be six films, covering a range of topics.
Newall is particularly excited about two of them.
The first, Stasi FC, "looks at fraud in sport but not so much from the viewpoint that we might be used to, which might be match fixing or doping type scandals," Newall said.
"Stasi FC is about the East German secret police who inject themselves into sport in the 70s, trying to stamp out football as a place for freedom of expression and dissent.
"How that becomes a fraud is in the manipulation of football results, really as much as anything to kind of prove that the state can and will control anything in an autocratic regime."
The second film he talks about is call The Man with a Thousand Faces. It's a documentary about a man who deceived four romantic partners, living with all of them at the same time.
"While they had financial repercussions from it, it's really about the emotional impact this had on them," Newall said.
This year's documentaries are all international, but Newall says they are still relevant to a New Zealand audience.
William Fotherby is chair of the festival and a partner at law firm Meredith Connell. In his work he often helps victims, both individuals and businesses, who have been defrauded. He is concerned about how common scams are here.
"I think the figures on it last year [are] about $200 million lost to fraud. And the real problem is so many people feel very, very foolish having realised that they've been the victim that they don't report [it], choosing rather just to cut their losses and hope that no one finds out."
He said there are three main types of fraud happening here that particularly concern him.
"One is the pretty classic 'give me a large amount of money and I'll invest it in cryptocurrency'.
"The second thing I'm seeing more and more is just the creation of fake websites which mirror well-known retailers.
"The third thing I think is very common but we're just going to continue to see a lot of it are these romance scams, what are called 'pig butchering' scams.
"These messages come from overseas, often South East Asia. And there's a whole industry devoted to this kind of scam, aimed at countries like New Zealand."
But there is an added layer to pig butchering.
"The person who has sent that message might often be the victim of a form of human trafficking already, and there are reported compounds of people in places like Vietnam who are essentially forced to make these types of messages, send them out, and if they don't get a certain level of performance, that can have an affect on their own person. They might be subjected to violence."
When it comes to self-protection, Fotherby said people should be 'very sceptical' of contact from people they do not know, and if they think they have been defrauded, to report it immediately to the bank .
"If you can act quickly you can often prevent money going out of your account."
He also warned about the 'secondary industry' that preys on victims who have already been scammed by offering to help them get their money back - for a fee, which is, of course, another scam.
The Fraud Film Festival runs Monday 17 March and Tuesday 18 March at the Roxy Cinema.
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