Fraud Awareness Week 2008 aimed to raise New Zealander’s awareness about how they could spot scams, protect themselves from scams, and report a scam to help protect others.

Fraud Awareness Week 2008 focused on scams that seduce consumers with promises of easy money, great prizes or true love and deceive or trick consumers into giving scammers their personal details.

The key messages for Fraud Awareness Week 2008 are very simple:

Scams target you. Protect yourself.
Don’t be seduced. Don’t be deceived.
Fight the scammers! Don't respond!
If it looks to good to be true, it probably is.
Go to SCAMwatch for further information.

You can get further key information from the Fraud Awareness Week 2008 resources.

Most scams originate from outside New Zealand and once money is sent overseas it is virtually impossible to recover.

But New Zealanders can fight scammers, simply by not responding to a scam attempt.

By responding you let the scammer know you are there. If you don’t respond they don’t know you exist and they can’t take your money.

International context

Scams continue to be a problem worldwide, with New Zealand and overseas research showing that consumers are still being targeted and too many are still being taken in. Educating consumers about how to avoid scams when they are targeted is considered a key scamming prevention strategy both in New Zealand and overseas.

In 2008, Fraud Awareness Initiatives are still a global effort of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network.

In Australia and New Zealand, initiatives are run under the umbrella of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce (ACFT). In 2008, the ACFT is made up of 19 trans-Tasman government regulatory agencies and departments.

New Zealand Co-ordination

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs and the Commerce Commission are members of the ACFT and coordinate the New Zealand initiative, with a number of other organisations that undertake their own action in parallel.

Organisations undertaking parallel action during Fraud Awareness Week 2008 include:

Banking Ombudsman
Department of Internal Affairs
Inland Revenue Department
Ministry of Economic Development
New Zealand Bankers Association
New Zealand Police
Netsafe
Privacy Commissioner
Securities Commission
Serious Fraud Office
Symantec
Telecom
Telstra Clear
TradeMe
Visa New Zealand
Vodafone New Zealand
Western Union

Fraud Awareness Week Action

During Fraud Awareness Week 2008, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs launched the new improved SCAMwatch site which provided new, up to date information, a scam alerts section, new examples of scams and an improved, simpler scam reporting function.

Media activity was focussed on raising awareness of scams, reminding people not to respond to them, and directing people to SCAMwatch for more information and to report scams.

This core activity was supported by the action undertaken within and by organisations that were working in parallel on fraud awareness during Fraud Awareness Week.

Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce (ACFT) 2008 scams survey

The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce is again running a survey to find out about any scams that consumers have received and how they have responded to them. Gathering this information will help to improve the detection and prevention of scams.

Consumers can fill out the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce 2008 scams survey on the Australian Institute of Criminology website.

Results of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce 2007 survey are now available.

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Fraud Awareness Week 2008 3 - 10 March

International context

New Zealand Co-ordination

Fraud Awareness Week Action

Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce (ACFT) 2008 scams survey

Fraud Awareness Week 2008
3 - 10 March