They asked: \u201cI\u2019ve just watched a Facebook reel of you promoting an investment scheme where you invite people to start with $425 but must be acted upon by 5pm today is this legit or someone using your likeness. I\u2019m a pensioner trying to secure my retirement. Any advice greatly appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olsen said he immediately said it was a scam and has now reported it to authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the two people that have contacted me were both pensioners, I\u2019m really worried that this scam is targeting vulnerable communities that might trust my economic commentary and reputation and are trying to use that to prey on people looking to make money.\u201d<\/p>\n
The video is pretty realistic, although it does give Olsen a slight Australian twang.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe video is quite convincing, at first glance it looks very much like me \u2013 the image is a real one of me that someone has superimposed an AI [artificial intelligence] face talking over the top of mine,\u201d Olsen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe voice and even tone and mannerisms in the voice are quite like mine too, including the phrases I might say \u2013 although the accent of the fake voice has a twang to it that clearly isn\u2019t me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has sent out warnings multiple times this year about scammers impersonating New Zealand politicians and business leaders, using fake news articles to promote fraudulent investment platforms.<\/p>\n
Since the start of 2025, the FMA has received around 180 reports about scams that use deepfake material to promote investment, it told the Herald. <\/p>\n
These scams have used fake news articles, manipulated images, and deepfake videos, and commonly involve pump-and-dump schemes and the impersonation of well-known New Zealanders.<\/p>\n
In the video, the AI Olsen says: \u201cGive me exactly three minutes, this time will forever change how you see your finances.\u201d<\/p>\n
As is often the case, the video uses urgency to try to convince people to act without thinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cStop, look at me, you\u2019ve seen me on your screens every week for years, it took me a long time and hard work to build my reputation, I\u2019m not going to throw that away on some cheap stunt,\u201d the fake Olsen says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019m about to tell you is something I would never under any circumstances be allowed to tell you on live television, because it\u2019s something the big banks absolutely hate, to be blunt.\u201d<\/p>\n
It described an \u201calgorithm\u201d banks use to make millions and said Olsen had found a hack to do the same, but only if people clicked on the link that day.<\/p>\n
Once Olsen was alerted, he took a screen grab of it and reported it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt absolutely sick when I was contacted by the two members of the public and then when watching the video, that people could be scammed out of their money by trusting a video that looked and sounded like me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m furious that someone would try and take my likeness, photo and voice and try to scam people out of their money and try and leverage off the work I do as an economist and commentator to inform people about economic trends and what I see happening in the economy. I strive hard to build a trusted reputation about economic trends and to see that trust taken and used for such reprehensible purposes has pissed me right off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olsen\u2019s also really worried someone might have seen the video and been convinced to put money into the platform.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s stressing he \u201cwould never promote any specific scheme, investment, platform or similar\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just not me, it\u2019s completely unethical and I hope that something so scummy and direct as trying to tell people about some magical, fantastical, investment that will earn you big bucks is a screaming red alert that such an idea is clearly a scam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olsen has a plea to people who spot such videos.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease, please, keep your wits about you. If something looks dodgy, or too good to be true, it probably is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m extremely grateful to the two very smart people who took a moment to contact me to understand if the scam was a real video \u2013 that was a sensible thing to do and meant I could report it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The video was reported to Facebook owner Meta as soon as possible and he had now reported it to Netsafe, the police and the FMA.<\/p>\n
Ironically, this week is Scam Awareness Week.<\/p>\n
The FMA posts warnings about popular investment scams on its website, including a list of contacts to be wary of.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson had advice for people whose image has been used, like in Olsen\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
\u201cReport the content to the platform hosting it, retain evidence like screenshots and links, and notify the FMA if it\u2019s being used as an investment scam. We encourage affected individuals to use their channels to warn their audience the endorsement is fake and not to engage with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FMA recommends extreme caution when engaging with online ads for investment opportunities, particularly where the ads use the image of a New Zealand politician, business leader or celebrity.<\/p>\n
It warns people not to click on these ads or links and not to enter personal information into these websites.<\/p>\n
Katie Bradford is a Senior Correspondent at the Herald. She has been a broadcast journalist for over 20 years and was based in the press gallery for 10 years. She specialises in politics, business and Auckland issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They asked: \u201cI\u2019ve just watched a Facebook reel of you promoting an investment scheme where you invite people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[74,365,60237,9556,363,364,1975,682,2941,25819,73196,3914,37483,293,37772,17518,9557,700,111,139,69,23854,7859,1461,18434,145,1361,1142,13797,3382,11548],"class_list":["post-581477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-after","tag-ai","tag-alerted","tag-artificial","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-at","tag-being","tag-brad","tag-deep","tag-deepfake","tag-economist","tag-fake","tag-his","tag-horrified","tag-image","tag-intelligence","tag-latest","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-olsen","tag-pensioners","tag-scam","tag-scams","tag-technology","tag-that","tag-trend","tag-used","tag-using","tag-voice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581477","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=581477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}