Scammers taking advantage of Cyclone Gabrielle tragedy

Scammers are taking advantage of the tragedy from Cyclone Gabrielle to try and make money, authorities are warning.

At least one bank has received several reports of scammers targeting its customers.

Westpac's head of financial crime Mark Coxhead said it had heard of about a dozen reports of attempted scams but said he feared that number could rise.

"It's really common, and it's really sad, but scammers are trying to take advantage of people when they're at their lowest, they're trying to catch you off guard," he said.

CERT NZ, the government agency monitoring cyber security threats in New Zealand, said millions of dollars each year are lost via scams.

Its incident response team manager Jordan Heerspring said there can be a spike in attempts after a tragedy like Cyclone Gabrielle.

"We've seen scams around funding for support for refugees in the Ukraine war, earthquakes we've seen in South America... and even in Covid we saw several reports of people trying to scam people out of money for paying for vaccinations."

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