Online Māori are increasingly becoming targets of direct ethnic online scams that utilise our culture to try to take advantage of Māori.
The latest scam involves someone on Facebook, Instagram, Phone message and other social media claiming to he one of the whanau, a cuzzie. The scams are sophisticated and take a bit of effort. Imagine this, you get a message from a cuzzie that starts off like this “Kia ora cuz, Arohamai for this. Any chance of a loan?”. If you are on social media, the picture will likely look like the cuz too. What do yo do?
To ensure you do not fall victim to the Scuzzie (an online scam claiming to be your cuzzie) simply ask some whakapapa patai if you are not able to ring or visit the other person. Even if it is just “who is our tipuna” or “who is our marae”? If you both speak Māori use te reo and be sure the replies are not using Google Translate which is easy to tell as the translations are very poor. If not sure, use the translator in reverse to see if it matches.
Scuzzie: a scam pretending to be you cuzzie.
Note: Purposefully written as a non Māori in parts to stop scuzzies getting ideas.
Mauriora!
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