{"id":499463,"date":"2026-06-28T11:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/499463\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:04:10","slug":"how-to-spot-a-get-rich-quick-scam-diana-clement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/499463\/","title":{"rendered":"How to spot a get-rich-quick scam – Diana Clement"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand has seen versions of this story before, and it rarely ends well for the people at the bottom of the chain. Almost 20 years ago, as many as 3000 investors lost money in Blue Chip and Merlot Property Group. Months before Blue Chip collapsed, I\u2019d been cold-called by the company, and I decided to pretend to be interested. The article from that exchange<\/a> is still online.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Binnie called Du Val founder Kenyon Clarke a \u201cdear friend\u201d. The BusinessDesk podcast, The Fall of the House of Du Val<\/a>, is compelling listening. Investments sold as low risk were anything but. <\/p>\n

\"KenyonKenyon Clarke and Charlotte Clarke. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

In New Zealand, financial services companies selling to \u201cwholesale investors\u201d face far lower disclosure and compliance requirements than when dealing with the average person. Someone can qualify as a wholesale investor if they earn over $200,000 a year, have more than $1 million in net assets, or are certified by a financial adviser as an \u201cexperienced investor\u201d. Maria Slade\u2019s Du Val investigation<\/a> found advisers signing people off as \u201cexperienced investors\u201d when, in some cases, their only investing experience was a KiwiSaver account.<\/p>\n

Even if someone is a high-earning heart surgeon, or ex\u2013All Black with substantial wealth, that doesn\u2019t automatically make them sophisticated investors.<\/p>\n

Get-rich-quick doesn\u2019t just pop up in property. Every decade, there is a new crop of investments promising to make people rich quickly but instead leaving them poorer. It has happened with crypto. The biggest crypto blow-ups weren\u2019t Bitcoin or other currencies. They were about so-called yield products and passive income schemes. Investors were promised returns of 8%, 10%, 15% or even 20% a year simply for depositing their crypto with platforms such as Celsius, BlockFi and Voyager.<\/p>\n

The pitch rarely changes, only the product being sold does. Property flips, private lending, complex crypto investments or unlisted equity deals all look different on the surface. But the get-rich-quick sales pitch is often very familiar, starting with videos on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. You\u2019ll see someone in a nice car, on a beach, or sitting on their sofa explaining how they made more in a month than most people earn in a year.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll talk about \u201cpassive income\u201d, \u201cwealth-building system\u201d, \u201cAI-powered this or that\u201d, \u201cexclusive opportunity\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n

Sometimes getting rich slow, by investing a little and regularly, can be a whole lot safer and more productive in the long run than falling for someone\u2019s smooth patter.<\/p>\n

Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter<\/a> \u2013 a weekly round-up of our best commentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand has seen versions of this story before, and it rarely ends well for the people at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1970,138,5162,8669,40442,16492,8668,84246,23966,249686,221,321,5511,5342,22315,111,139,1536,69,9061,49757,18935,30503,6443,4514,1461,418,184970,10536,26660,15412,249687,1569,1361,61,70722,416,14047,379],"class_list":["post-499463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-believe","tag-business","tag-chasing","tag-clement","tag-convincing","tag-delays","tag-diana","tag-emails","tag-enough","tag-getrichquick","tag-how","tag-investors","tag-just","tag-losses","tag-minute","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-often","tag-plausible","tag-posts","tag-promises","tag-returns","tag-same","tag-scam","tag-shows","tag-slick","tag-someone","tag-sound","tag-spot","tag-spreadsheet","tag-starts","tag-that","tag-to","tag-unanswered","tag-video","tag-way","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}