Nigel Latta once tweeted about how a scammer had phoned him, claiming to be from Spark and saying there was a serious problem with his “faulty internet”. The psychologist, author and TV presenter shared in hilarious detail about how he decided to wind up the fraudster.
When the scammer wanted to know if he had Windows on his computer, Nigel described every window in his house. When asked about the lights on his modem, he said there were green ones, red ones, orange ones, a disco light and a search light. “Is that normal?” he asked the conman. Eventually, after Nigel had rabbited on and on, the guy hung up on him.
His retelling of the conversation is extremely funny, but Nigel knows only too well that for many people, encounters with scammers are no laughing matter.
Nigel’s hosting a new TV series called You’ve Been Scammed By Nigel Latta that looks at how scammers exploit our human weaknesses to con us out of money. The show was the idea of the Banking Ombudsman, who wanted to get more information out to the public about how to spot a scam.
Nigel – whose TV shows have covered subjects like true crime, parenting and money – always thought he was pretty savvy when it came to detecting dodgy emails, texts and calls.
“But so much of the stuff we found out when making this programme surprised me, in fact just about everything did,” he admits. “I’ve always been careful about not clicking links and responding to emails, but I had no idea how extensive and abundant these scams are. The chance of getting scammed is really high because there are so many scams out there and these guys are really good at what they do.
“These people contact you and they sound convincing, and their information sounds real, but what you don’t realise is that they are exploiting your vulnerabilities.”
He cites the case of a woman in her early twenties who fell victim to a romance scam and sent $3000 to a man who appealed to her trusting nature. “She wasn’t super-wealthy; she was just a nice person trying to help someone, and she lost all this money to this scumbag guy. Often, it’s people who can’t afford to lose any money who get ripped off.”
Con artists prey on your confidence that you would never fall for a scam, and many sound so plausible that, before you know it, you’ve sent them money or given them your personal information.
“We found an investment scammer who got people to invest their money with him because he talked about an interest rate of 6.5 percent. It was pretty good, but not too good to be true,” recounts Nigel. “He has probably stolen something like $4 million from people around New Zealand. We interviewed a real estate agent who had lost her life savings of over $100,000 to this guy. She did a pretty good job of trying to verify that he was legitimate and there was even a website where you could see your money sitting in a fund. But it was all a scam.”
Nigel says working on You’ve Been Scammed has been a real eye-opener and he’s enjoyed a return to television, although despite having made numerous shows since he first hosted Beyond the Darklands in 2008, he still hasn’t got used to being on the small screen.
“I really like making TV and I like the people I work with and the people I get to meet, but it’s just a strange thing being on telly,” he reflects. “When the ads start playing and I see myself, I think, ‘Oh, that’s kind of weird.'”
In between making You’ve Been Scammed, Nigel has been doing lots of public speaking and working on a unique parenting app, called Parentland, which will be released in the next few weeks. On the occasions people recognise him in public and stop to talk to him, it’s usually about parenting, thanks to the wise advice he’s dispensed via his TV shows and books over the years.
But now he’s likely to get people telling him about their scamming experiences.
“There are just so many people who have been taken in,” says Nigel, adding that while he’s never been scammed himself, he knows people who have. “I’m really glad we’ve done this show so people can see that everyday smart, capable people get scammed, and hopefully we can help to prevent some cases. It could happen to any of us.”
You’ve Been Scammed By Nigel Latta screens 8pm Mondays on TVNZ 1.
