May 10, 2022
Heart overcomes head as fraudsters rampage
A wahine Māori who spent two and a half years in an Argentine jail after a romance scam led her to becoming an unwitting drug mule is warning anyone can become a victim.
Sharon Armstrong says continuing stories about vulnerable people scammed out of their savings by people they met online shows it’s a lucrative business for criminals.
The former Māori Language Commission deputy chief executive wrote the book Organised Deception because she says if she’d come home and shut up about her ordeal the scammers would have won.
She says there are signs people ignore because they think they’re entering a romantic relationship.
“The moment they have some difficulty in their life, an elaborate set up of some sort, where they ask you for money. It may not always be money. It may be phone cards, it may be gift cards, nowadays we are looking at bitcoin and cryptocurrency and all those other means they can exploit and get money or something off their victims. If it seems to be too good to be true, I can almost guarantee it is,” Ms Armstrong says.
She says for most victims denial is the hardest part because they don’t want their house of cards to fall down.