Financial scams frequently target people online. Photo: 123RF
A woman who fell victim to a revictimization scam wants her story to be a warning to others.
Doreen and her husband had lost small amounts of money in investment scams in recent years.
But it was when someone claimed to be able to get that money back - plus returns - that the situation snowballed.
In October last year, she received a phone call from a woman who told her she knew about one of the scams, that she had walked away from in May 2023.
"I had put my phone on airplane mode at night for weeks because I was getting calls at all hours of the night and they drove me crazy. I'm in my very late-70s and it's very painful getting rung up at all hours of the night. I blocked many calls but for some reason I answered that one."
She was curious as to what the woman knew about the scam and within minutes she was called by another man who told her that someone was trying to get money out of an account in her name.
She had "invested" $4000 but the man told her there was an investment now worth $66,000 there but the scammers could not get it because they did not have her identity.
"It sounded reasonably genuine."
She was then told that the man had searched the blockchain and found a second small investment worth $280,000 also only accessible with her identity. "But because of the amount he needed to cover the taxation. I spoke to my husband and he said 'why not, give it a go' - we had to pay 23 percent of $220,000 so we did that."
Her husband then asked the man to check another small investment he had made that had gone wrong. "He came back and said he'd found that one and there was $500,000-and-something sitting in that one."
She said the man was well spoken and said he was in London, and had a couple of children. "My husband even said 'get us this money back and we'll shout you a trip to New Zealand'."
Doreen said her daughter was suspicious but they were initially confident and transferred money via cryptocurrency exchange Easy Crypto in chunks of $20,000, and gave him access to their computer and the Metamask cryptocurrency wallet they were using.
"Easy Crypto were diligent in trying to ask whether there was a third party… we lied and said no there wasn't. We were schooled by this guy not to. That's a huge red flag, when they tell you don't talk about this to anyone, don't even talk with your family."
She said they lost about $100,000 all up.
"We're okay. Our granddaughter is going to university in Auckland and we thought we could buy a flat up there - he was talking $1 million - and she could live there and it would be a big help to her.
"You feel such a fool, that's the hardest part. You feel you've let yourself down something terribly. I'm angry with myself. I'm not stupid."
She said she told her husband to go to Australia for 13 days while she stayed at home alone to process what had happened and make peace with it.
The scammer was still trying to contact them now, she said, seeking access to a token worth USDT48,000 in their digital wallet, even though they had decided in late December that they would cut contact. He tried to reassure them he was a good man, she said.
Netsafe chief executive Brent Carey said revictimization scams were common and there were a few things that should have sounded alarms about what happened to Doreen.
He said people should always only go through their banks or the police to try to recover money.
Doreen said she reported it to the police but was only given information on how to avoid being scammed in future.
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