Sally Tagg
Suzanne Paul is the much-loved infomercial queen who can sell anything to anyone, and is a well-known celebrity both in New Zealand and Australia. But recently, her celebrity status meant she was the victim of an extremely nasty hacking.
“It’s been a nightmare and it still is a nightmare,” says Suzanne, who is keen to warn people about how easy it is to have someone take over your social media accounts and disrupt your life.
“I am Facebook friends with broadcaster Steve McIvor, who had been hacked but didn’t realise it. So when I got a message from him asking me to ‘like’ his new brand of menswear, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I was happy to click on the link and give him some support.”
But then everything went black. Immediately after she clicked on that link, she lost her Instagram, Facebook and Messenger accounts. They had disappeared and she could no longer log into them.
“I couldn’t even get a message out to my followers that I had been hacked, so they kept getting these crypto currency messages telling them I had made heaps of money and telling them to do it too,” says Suzanne.
As she and husband Patrick Kuhtze tried desperately to report the hacking and get access to the accounts again, the hacker put up a picture of Suzanne holding a glass of Champagne on a private family messenger group Patrick had set up with his four sons, their partners and grandchildren. The hacker, pretending to be Suzanne on her birthday, said, “Hey, it’s my birthday. Wish me a happy birthday!”
“That was really scary,” she recalls. “It was obvious to us then that he had all my personal details and I would never get them back.”
Suzanne and husband Patrick spent sleepless nights trying to undo the the chaos created by a scammer.
As Suzanne tried to contact Instagram and Facebook, she was online getting advice from other people who had been hacked, and suddenly realised that because she had shopped while on Instagram and Facebook, her bank details were probably with the hacker as well.
“I had to close my bank accounts, which meant I had nothing to pay for my coffee with. I’ve only just got my new EFTPOS card.”
The reason Suzanne could not access her social media was that the hacker immediately changed her email address, password and phone number.
“Patrick and I spent the whole week trying to fix it and finally my agent Karyn Kay got her daughter Mila to sit with us for two hours to see what she could do.
“She was shocked at how sophisticated the hack was and told me I needed to get a new email, phone number and passwords.”
Suzanne finally has her Instagram back but not her Facebook or Messenger, which is where she communicates mainly with old friends and family back in England.
“I’ve got all of my friends and relatives overseas that message me on Facebook and I don’t have emails for these people. I don’t even have phone numbers for them, so I can’t try WhatsApp or anything like that.”
Suzanne has 92,400 followers on Instagram and gets a lot of work at speaking events through that channel, so she’s relieved to be up and running again.
Meanwhile, having turned 67 recently, she is determined to keep as active as she can.
“I’m a big one for being grateful. I thank God and the universe every day for my health and safety, and for Patrick’s health and safety. That’s why I got so much into fitness this year. I seem to be all or nothing, me. I’m either working like a madwoman and I’m not doing any fitness at all, and then this year in January, I thought, ‘I’m going to commit to my fitness programme this year.'”
So, on Mondays Suzanne does Zumba, Tuesday’s Pilates, Wednesday is ballet, Thursday she has a personal trainer at the gym and every day she also walks her rescue dog Matty.
“It’s important when you’re older. I don’t want everything sagging and hanging down to the floor, but it’s more about being strong and having good balance.”
Suzanne says her latest work project, which saw her lending her brand to help market small businesses through social media and YouTube, has come to an end.
“I did a whole year of that and we helped hundreds of companies. I wrote adverts and filmed videos, and I really loved it. But it was a lot of driving. It was three hours a day and in the middle of winter, it was not fun.”
By the end of the year, she realised her work-life balance was out of kilter.
“I wasn’t seeing much of Patrick and Matty, and I realised I needed to get some quality time back.”
Suzanne and Patrick go from strength to strength – with Matty the dog’s blessing!
Suzanne and Patrick love going to see shows and movies, attend functions and parties, and go out for dinner, but by the time she got home, she was exhausted.
“I was always going here, there and everywhere. After I’d done that, I’d get home and didn’t want to go to a party or a function. I didn’t want to speak or look at anybody.”
But she wouldn’t be Suzanne Paul without something new brewing in the background.
“Look, there’s a new project and I’m in training for it at the moment, but I won’t talk about it because if I’m no good at it, I won’t be doing it!” she laughs.
Just over a year ago, Suzanne and Patrick headed to Gretna Green in the United Kingdom to get married. This year, they celebrated their first wedding anniversary by heading up north to the Duke of Marlborough Hotel in Russell.
“One of Patrick’s sons gave us a voucher as a wedding present, which is lovely because it holds special memories for both of us. Patrick’s dad used to play piano there, his mum was head waitress and his grandmother was head chef. Patrick claims he was conceived in room 11!”
Suzanne’s first job when she got to New Zealand was as a waitress there too.
Patrick has proved to be a very devoted husband in more ways than one. Not only did he spoil Suzanne on Mother’s Day with cards from her pooch Matty and cat Sid, but he also became chief kitten handler when Suzanne and her neighbour rescued nine wild kittens.
“We knew we had to do something for them because they were out in the freezing rain, so we got some traps and got nine kittens and three cats,” she tells.
“I was so pleased with myself and we took them all to the vets – the cats to be neutered and then put back in the wild, and the kittens to be medicated as they were all quite sick.”
A year on from their blissful big day.
When Suzanne popped into the vet to check on her charges, she knew she’d be taking the adult cats back to release them into the wild, but she hadn’t realised she’d be taking the kittens home.
“The vet said they were all sick and suddenly everyone was looking at me to take them. I thought, ‘I can’t take nine kittens! I’ve got my old cat Sid who is sick.’ But then the vet got me some runs to put them in, so that was that.”
When Suzanne rang Patrick to tell him she was bringing home the litter, he wasn’t very impressed.
“Patrick had been running around cleaning up after Sid, who had projectile diarrhoea, and now he was going to have to clean up after nine kittens and give them their medication.”
She managed to get all nine kittens fostered, which is what has to happen for wild kittens before they can be sent to homes, and Suzanne says throughout it all, they only lost one kitten to illness.
Shortly afterwards, the pair lost Sid, who succumbed to his many illnesses, and now they just have their very clingy Matty, who they adopted during Covid.
“Because I was at work so much, he is now very much Patrick’s dog,” says Suzanne.
During her year of fitness, Suzanne has also found time to do something she has been meaning to do for 14 years – find a home for her mother Eileen’s ashes.
“I was really close to my mum. I’ve always had her ashes with me, but lately I’ve been worried that if I pop my clogs, what will happen to them? Will Patrick know what to do? He doesn’t even know what to do with me! I was concerned that Mum didn’t have anything to mark that she’d been on the planet.”
Suzanne has found a plot for her mother at the Schnapper Rock cemetery and has ordered her a headstone.
“You can sit there and look out to the sea, and I know she’d love that.”
Suzanne loved it so much, she’s bought the plot next to Eileen and Patrick has bought the plot next to Suzanne.
“We realised that we needed to annivtell each other what we wanted for our funerals,” she explains. “What songs to play, what readings we’d like… So we’ve written them down and they’re in a folder, and we’ll also give them to one of Patrick’s sons.
“I didn’t find it morbid,” she reflects. “I actually felt quite a relief to have done that. And to know that we’ll be all right, and that my mum’s going to have a final resting place at last.”
If you are worried about hacking or scams, contact netsafe.org.nz
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