What if you offered a seminar on scams and no-one came?
Monday, 22 June 2026
Maybe they thought it was too good to be true.
A strange thing happened when Wellington cybersecurity guru Simon Howard tried to organise a public event to help people detect online scams.
Nobody came. Well, not nobody. But certainly nowhere near as many as he and his co- organiser, tech business leader Serge van Dam expected.
When 72% of Kiwis have encountered a scam in the past year, with around $3 billion lost, you’d expect people to rush to get better informed, right?
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Wrong, says van Dam.
This wasn't a niche seminar about coding or an industry conference for IT professionals.
It was aimed squarely at ordinary New Zealanders, those most likely to be targeted by scammers, those most likely and less able to lose money.
Tickets were priced at about $30. It was a fundraiser for Brooklyn School AIMS games athletes. Stunned, Howard tried another experiment.
'He went out to his networks on Facebook and LinkedIn and said, 'The first 10 are free. I'll pay for it myself.' Not a single person took him up on it,' van Dam says.
Here’s the paradox. Netsafe research over three years shows a clear trend: scams are more common, more costly, and more sophisticated, while prevention and reporting remain largely unchanged.
In the past year, the average scamming loss was $3352, pushing national losses to $3 billion – nearly 0.75% of GDP.
Scams are rising faster than the defences designed to stop them. Tactics have evolved. Once it was phone calls, now scams arrive through direct messaging.
Shopping scams make up half of all cases, impersonation, employment and romance scams are increasing. And yet so few of us would pay $30 to avoid losing $3000, a school fundraiser was imperilled.
When the weakest place in the security chain is a human being persuaded something is real, when it isn’t, surely forewarned is forearmed.
'Every year, every one of our cybersecurity consultants tells us that your employees falling for a scam and giving away the keys to your kingdom is your No 1 vulnerability,' says van Dam, warning that it’s only going to get worse.
'The biggest thing a business has got to worry about is your people handing over the keys.'
There appears to be a widespread reluctance to learn about the threat, with those who have been scammed seemingly too embarrassed to admit it.
'There's this cognitive dissonance,' van Dam says. 'Most people know somebody who's been scammed, but they still think it won't happen to them.'
Even when the numbers suggest otherwise.
'This year our spend on digital scams will overtake our spend on the New Zealand Police. I just think that is insane.'
What makes scams so difficult is that they don't look like scams any more. A Nigerian prince offering millions in exchange for your bank details is long gone. Now scammers are less likely to spell poorly, or have haphazard English.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating the arrivals of tricks. Criminals know astonishing amounts about each of us before they ever make contact, van Dam says.
'My Facebook profile knows that I love football and mountain biking. It knows where I live. It knows my wife's name.'
Using AI, scammers can combine those fragments into a convincing story.
'They can properly socially engineer you.'
So instead of a random message from a stranger, you might receive something that feels familiar, personal and plausible. Would you like to buy this beautiful bike? It's persuasion.
'It's basically confidence tricks,' van Dam says.
One recent example involved fake Tai Chi classes targeted at middle-aged people.
The advertisements appeared local and legitimate. People joined WhatsApp groups populated by what seemed to be other participants. They were then encouraged to download an app.
Only the app wasn't a Tai Chi app. Once downloaded, it allowed scammers to access the victims' bank accounts, police said.
Thousands of people in New Zealand and Australia reportedly downloaded it, potentially giving criminals access to sensitive information and online banking credentials.
Humans have always recognised obvious dangers. If a sabre-toothed tiger appeared at the entrance to a cave, our ancestors didn't need a seminar on potential danger.
'If we did a seminar for $30 on how to react to a shark attack,' van Dam says, 'we'd probably have more people attend, and how many shark attacks are there?'
Van Dam points out many forms of security are inconvenient.
'A PIN for your card is inconvenient. Locking your house is inconvenient.'
But becoming a victim is worse.
Scamming for Dummies: Monday from 4.30pm-6.30pm, at the BNZ Partners Centre Wellington.