New Zealand scam survey finds most victims never report what happened

Scams reached 83% of the 1,180 New Zealand adults surveyed by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance for its State of Scams in New Zealand 2026 report, yet only 2% of people reported one to the authorities. Report any scam you encounter to the authorities, even if no money was lost.

What the survey measured

The study asked New Zealand adults about scam exposure, confidence, and outcomes. Exposure held steady: 83% had encountered a scam this year, against 82% in 2025. Confidence did not match exposure. 73% of respondents said they felt confident recognizing scams, yet 44% of those who encountered one went on to interact with the scammer anyway.

Confidence and contact are two different things. Recognizing that a message looks suspicious does not stop someone from replying to it, clicking a link in it, or answering a call from it. The survey shows both numbers side by side, and together they show that awareness alone does not block the approach.

Losses, repeat harm, and silence

Across all respondents, 8% lost money or shared personal information that led to a financial loss. Among people who were victimised, the harm was not always a single event: 37% said they had lost money to scams more than once. That repetition matters. A person who has already lost money once is not automatically protected against a second attempt, and the survey suggests the opposite happens almost as often as not.

The mental toll shows up clearly in the data. 60% of victims said being scammed had a significant or moderate impact on their mental wellbeing. That is three in five people carrying some lasting effect from an incident that, in most cases, was never reported anywhere.

Set against all of this, the 2% reporting rate is the smallest number in the whole study and the one that shapes everything else. Regulators and banks build their response to scams from the cases they hear about. If most cases never reach an authority, the official picture of scams in New Zealand is built from a small fraction of what is actually happening. That is the specific thing this report changes: it gives a fuller count, from people directly, that sits above whatever the reporting agencies see on their own.

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