A scammer using my name answered the phone. Here’s what happened

Sunday, 17 August 2025

After New Zealanders were scammed by fake ads quoting her, Paula Penfold wanted answers, so she went looking for the people responsible.

This week I had to call Gayle Sinclair, a 69-year-old who lives in Westport, to tell her she’d been scammed because she believed something she thought I’d said.

She sent me an email.

“Sorry to bother you but I’m very worried that I have been scammed after reading this article,” she wrote, forwarding a post that had appeared on her Facebook page with the headline, “‘They forced us to destroy the materials’: Exclusive interview with Paula Penfold about Stuff Circuit.”

Sinclair wanted to know: “Is this real or fake? I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

The premise of the article, and many other ads and posts that began surfacing on Facebook and Instagram on Monday, was that I had been working on a sensational investigation but Stuff wouldn’t publish it, so here I was, revealing all, because apparently “I couldn’t stay silent”.

The version of the article Sinclair had seen claimed the “investigation” was into how large corporations profit from the housing crisis and the aftermath of the Covid lockdowns, quoting me saying we had traced the money flows “and discovered incredible things”.

There’s a flow chart and a legal letter and a bank statement and plenty of photos of me and my former Stuff Circuit colleagues.

And then the clincher.

We apparently discovered a “network of ‘subsidiary’ platforms through which impressive sums were flowing,” and that “some of these platforms on a charitable basis open up slots for individual registration”.

This information was allegedly so sensitive that Stuff’s advertisers and “partners” expressed doubts about the investigation and Stuff management began to pressure us, delay our salaries, and then ultimately delete all the files.

The “article” went on to say we conducted an experiment on (in this version of the story) a platform called Štedo Quin.

Long story short, we made loads of money!

None of that had happened. But there was plenty about the presentation of the “story” that made it seem credible, and it had a “sensational” headline, enticing Sinclair to click on it.

“I just wanted to read it, so I did.”

The “reviews” at the bottom of the page “sounded good, sounded legitimate,” she thought.

So Sinclair clicked on a link “provided by Paula Penfold”, under the heading 'Quick guide to start earning”, taking her to a registration page, where she signed up.

It was awful calling to tell her she’d been scammed, and obviously she was upset.

But she was happy to talk through how it happened because she doesn’t want other New Zealanders falling for the same thing.

Sonya in Switzerland

After Sinclair clicked on that registration link she got a phone call almost immediately, from a woman called Sonya.

“She spoke to me for ages, set the account up and said she’d ring again the next night, which she did.

“And then I got all this spiel about how trading works and cryptocurrency and she sounded really nice. She told me she’s 39, from the Ukraine, lives in Switzerland. And I thought, well, at least you rang back.”

Sinclair paid $435 dollars and got a receipt for an “Elite Level” cryptocurrency package. “I haven’t started trading yet, because apparently she’s still got a lot to explain to me.”

She was sent an app called AnyDesk to download, giving Sonya and her colleagues remote access to Sinclair’s phone.

On the next call, Sonya wanted to know how much Sinclair had in her bank account.

“She had to set up a schedule for me, just to make sure she knew what I wanted out of this trading, and even started calling me ‘dear’. So she’s really sort of moving in, in a way that doesn’t feel right.”

But Sinclair ignored her instinct. “I was hoping it wasn’t true, because it was an article that you’d written.”

She pauses.

“Did you write it?”

I tell her no.

“Oh. For God’s sake. Gosh, they’re getting more elaborate, aren’t they.”

Sally’s story

Sinclair was not the only one.

Sally*, a semi-retired teacher from Auckland, prides herself on being able to recognise a scam. “I’ve always been quite wary.”

But she clicked on the registration link.

“It wasn’t very long before somebody rang me, Lexi, that was her name.”

Lexi too was apparently based in Switzerland. Sally talked with her for 15 minutes about what the investment would entail, then two other people.

“They were all really nice, and they were very pleasant conversations. I didn’t feel pushed into anything. It was very sophisticated.”

They wanted Sally to be on her computer so they could send her AnyDesk, giving them remote access.

After she’d paid $420 they showed Sally her “account”. And then she got put through to Jeffery, “the investment guy”.

“He was very friendly, he was 40, he came from Massachusetts, he and his wife and two kids.

“He wanted to know how much I made every week. He was kind of trying to find out from me what my situation was and how much I’d like to invest and then he was going to ring me back on Tuesday night to talk further about it.”

But on Tuesday Sally was passing her bank and decided to pop in and ask them if they knew about this and if it was a scam.

“And they didn’t really know if it was, but we decided we would cancel it, and they were going to investigate further.”

On Thursday the fraud department at Sally’s bank called her.

“Apparently someone tried — twice — to take another $420 from my Visa card, but it was picked up by the bank and declined.”

The two attempts had happened at the same time Sally was on the phone to them talking about her “investments”.

‘Hello, is that Jeffrey?’

So I call “the investment guy”, who goes by the name Jeffrey Bower. (You can listen to the conversation at the top of this page.)

I set out to Jeffrey how posts on Facebook, purportedly quoting me, link to a site which people in New Zealand have registered for, leading to him, and I’d like to know more about who he is, and the service.

“I'm not really sure that this is affiliated with us in any shape or form,” he says. “I think you've been misled. I'm not really sure how… How’d you get my number?”

I explain it came from someone in New Zealand who had talked to him, and I again ask who he is and who he works for.

“What it has to do with the, with the, the story that you saw with, ah, Facebook, I'm not really sure. Why should I answer this question? … I am not obligated to give you an answer about that. I am responsible for everything that I do, however I’m not obligated to give you any answer on that.”

Jeffrey says he has “absolutely nothing to do with what you just mentioned … the Facebook thing,” and while he’s not sure who I’ve been talking to, “100% I can tell you one thing, that none of them have any complaints about what we do with them, and they are all happy.”

They’re not, I tell him. They do have complaints. Because he has scammed them.

“I really don't think that that's the case, okay, and if they have complaints, journalists should not be calling me.”

I explain that I think I’m entitled to call him about this, given my name as a journalist is being used to scam honest New Zealanders. And that he has been involved in ripping them off.

That’s when he hangs up.

What the regulators say

The platform Sinclair and Sally were dealing with, StateFunds, was added to the Financial Management Authority’s (FMA) warnings page on August 8, citing fake news stories.

It details how the fake news articles have links to websites advertising investment platforms or promoting educational materials about investments. They have registration forms where “potential victims” are asked to enter contact details.

“Scammers then contact the victim claiming to be an investment broker and giving investing instructions,” the FMA says. “Victims are encouraged to first make a small investment (around US$250/NZ$420). Requests for larger investments will likely follow.

“When the victim asks to withdraw funds, they are told they must first pay fees before money can be released. Even if these fees are paid, no money is returned.”

The FMA advises anyone who thinks they have been scammed to contact their bank immediately and ask if a transaction reversal is possible.

If they have downloaded remote access software such as AnyDesk on the instruction of the scammers, they should immediately contact an IT professional to have their device checked for malware — malicious software.

What about Meta, since the scam runs on its platforms?

After I contacted Meta’s media people to complain about the scam, a spokesperson replied saying they had removed the pages “for violating our policies”.

“Meta doesn’t want scams on our platforms and we are continuing to invest in tools and technology to prevent them.”

Meta advises users to report suspected scams or profiles impersonating people, so they can investigate and take appropriate action.

But freelance journalist Dylan Reeve who has written about this issue for The Spinoff says reporting does not work.

For more than a year he has been adding to a dossier whenever he sees scam ads on Facebook. The dossier captures hundreds of them.

“I’ve used Facebook’s tools to report almost every ad that I’ve documented, and many besides. The majority are ‘resolved’ after a week — with no action taken.”

Reeve shared his dossier with Stuff. It chronicles Facebook pages that have run multiple campaigns months apart, “with no action from Facebook”.

“This issue is absolutely one of choice for Meta,” he says. “There’s no way they don’t have the ability to really substantially disrupt this. They are choosing not to.”

Reeve believes there is also much more the Government could do.

“In the EU there are laws that require Facebook to at least display some level of transparency about their ads. New Zealand could easily enact a law that demands the same here, and Facebook absolutely has the technology to enable it.”

Frustrated about the lack of any action, Reeve welcomes me into the “screaming into the void club” of reporting about this.

“This is something I’m genuinely incensed about, and I see no signs of improvement. There have been vague noises from government, but I’m very sceptical.”

‘I do feel sick’

Even though I can rationalise that I’m not personally responsible, it still makes me feel ill that New Zealanders have lost money because they trusted something they thought I’d said.

I have no way of knowing how many have fallen victim to this scam, or how much money they’ve lost.

Jeffrey probably knows, but I don’t fancy my chances of getting that information out of him.

I call Sinclair back to see if she’s had any luck contacting her bank, KiwiBank.

“They have restricted my accounts, I can’t even access them,” she says. They’d advised her that the scammers could have put malware in her phone with the AnyDesk installation and she wouldn’t be able to access her accounts until her computer and phone had been scanned for viruses.

The bank launched a scam investigation and advised her not to answer her phone for scheduled calls with the scammers. Bank staff would be in touch.

“Whether I get my money back is another story.”

As our call comes to a close Sinclair tells me she too feels sick.

“I just can’t understand how people think that way. You know? I like to think that I’m a good, honest, reliable person, and I would never be able to rip people off. Ever. You have to be a special sort of person, don’t you?”

An asshole? I suggest.

“Yeah, an asshole.”

*Name changed to protect privacy.