SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.
Charity warns of email scam – NZPA 4 April 2011
Full story: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4845694/Charity-warns-of-email-scam
A [legitimate] United States-based charity [CHOICE Humanitarian] is warning New Zealanders not to respond to unsolicited emails using its name and promising large sums of money. [Read more…]
A charity worker, Paul Tuba Mika, conned a wealthy woman living in the upmarket Auckland suburb of Herne Bay, into believing he was a cancer-cure guinea pig in a bid to scam millions of dollars from her. [Read more…]
Police spokesperson Jon Neilson has told The Wellingtonian (24 March) that police would investigate complaints from the public about scams, including those targeting potential donors to Christchurch earthquake appeals, if there was sufficient evidence. The Chief executive of the New Zealand Red Cross, John Ware, has been quoted as having evidence that “scammers are trying to take advantage of the public’s generosity at this devastating time”, using online scams and setting up insecure websites that illegally seek to harvest details of potential donors’ credit card and bank accounts and other personal information.
But is it legitimate for any registered charity to lodge formal complaints with enforcement agencies such as the police when evidence comes to light of possible criminal activities? How can such complaints be justified within the humanitarian, philanthropic, public service objectives of a registered charity such as NZ Red Cross or The Salvation Army for example?
Of course it is legitimate and fully justified for any charity to lodge formal complaints when evidence of scams, lack of legal compliance, money-laundering, or any criminal activity comes to light in the course of its own activities. In fact charities have a social responsibility to do so because such scams are “injurious to the public good”. The financial cost of white collar crime alone in New Zealand has been estimated to be about one billion dollars per year, according to the latest KPMG fraud barometer survey. [Read more…]
Serious Fraud Office boss Adam Feeley has warned that a new report showing a surge in the value of fraud convictions is only scratching the surface of the true cost of financial crime in New Zealand. The latest KPMG fraud barometer showed that the value of fraud convictions in New Zealand in 2010 was more than $172 million, more than the value for 2008 and 2009 combined….
Mr Feeley said the KPMG study prompted discussion about financial fraud, but did not give a true indication of the true level of fraud being committed. “I think we are, and it’s a terrible cliche, really only beginning to cratch the surface of financial crime in New Zealand.”
Stephen Bell, head of forensics at KPMG, said … it was difficult to assess the true extent of fraud in New Zealand, although a 2010 KPMG survey showed companies believed only one third of frauds were being detected, and with lower level fraud excluded from the survey, it was possible the problem could be worth more than $1 billion a year.
Full story: BusinessDay.co.nz Hamish Rutherford, 28 March 2011 http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/4815448/Surge-in-fraud-points-to-huge-cost
Note: The Society (SPCS) as part of its Constitution, seeks “To focus attention on the harmful nature and consequences of …. fraud, dishonesty in business and other forms of moral corruption.” Section 2(d)
Workplace fraud totalling millions of dollars is hitting firms at a time when they need every cent to climb out of the recession. According to a survey by accountancy firm KPMG, New Zealand’s top companies have been hit hard during the global financial crisis with the average reported fraud doubling in two years. Stephen Bell, KPMG’s national head of forensic practice, said the average cost of fraud at companies that took part in its survey grew from $1.9 million in 2008 to $3.8 million last year. He said the total level of fraud increased from $385 million (2008) to $441 million (2010)…
Grace Haden [who] is a director at Auckland private investigation firm Verisure Investigations says… “Companies must be being ripped off left, right and centre – but New Zealand is portrayed as being so corruption-free that people don’t believe it happens here.”
[Comment: The Society (SPCS) believes that the myth that the NZ business and work-place environment is corruption-free must be well and truly exposed as a complete falsehood. The injurious nature of white-collar crime such as fraud etc. to the “public good” must be regularly presented so that the rationale for promoting good community standards can be understood as of real benefit to the spiritual and material well-being of society in general].
Report by Steve Hart, a freelance journalist. Tuesday Mar 1, 2011
For full story see: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10709506