Whose job is it to take action against scammers? As The Detail finds out, a number of different agencies are responsible, but there are concerns they're not doing enough to protect people from falling victim to scams.
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Promises of huge returns, doubling your investment - as they say, if it sounds too good to be true, most of the time, it probably is.
As scams become increasingly elaborate, there are concerns about the slow pace of action from authorities - especially when scammers are targeting vulnerable communities.
National Business Review journalist Nicholas Pointon has investigated a scheme called Validus, which promised compound returns of 350 percent.
"That is truly amazing, truly astronomical figures they were talking about...but people were getting sucked in by it," he tells The Detail.
"They were holding a lot of in-person events, mainly around south Auckland...the core product is they sell financial training courses...the only way you could pay for these courses was through cryptocurrency. You speak to anyone who works around scams or cybersecurity, that's always a bit of a red flag."
Pointon's colleague Maria Slade has been looking into an alleged pyramid scheme called MFC Club, which targeted Chinese New Zealanders.
"It was the most incomprehensible system...it was very much a case of 'the mum that I ran into down at the Tai Ping Supermarket, she kept encouraging me to come to one of these meetings, learn how to invest, learn how to double your money'. When your own community keeps telling you it's the bees-knees it becomes almost like brainwashing."
But during their investigations, both Pointon and Slade found the response of regulators to be slow, especially when compared to Australia.
The Financial Markets Authority, the Commerce Commission and CERT NZ all play a role, but the NBR journalists found gaps in their responses, as the difference in how each agency works isn't always clearly defined.
In Australia, Slade explains they're setting up a new national anti-scams centre.
"This will be a coordinated effort by a whole range of regulators, and private organisations as well, to develop a national communications strategy, to educate against scams and provide consistent messaging around it."
Slade would like to see CERT NZ take on this sort of role here.
CERT NZ is responsible for dealing with cybercrime and it helps coordinate scam fighting.
Its director Rob Pope says although centralisation like Australia might sound good, "it's not necessarily always the nirvana that people think it is".
He believes education is one of the key ways to reduce scam-related harm.
"Even though technology's been around for a long time, we are a country that in some areas is quite slow to pick up technology and understand it," he says.
"For example, we don't have an end-to-end curricula in schools for technology awareness, cyber management and the like. We have quite an ageing population where technology can be scary, so people use it sparingly or use it in a way because they are frightened about certain aspects of technology.
"Education and awareness raising is a slow burn, but it's one which has been applied pretty consistently across the board. We put an awful amount of our budget into education and awareness raising because that's the area that we see as more beneficial than having to respond to 15,000 extra reports a year."
Hear more about the rise of scams and efforts to crack down on them in the full podcast episode.
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