Grey Power September 2018

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10 NZ GREYPOWER MAGAZINE » SEPTEMBER 2018 Beware of financial abuse Older people rely on family members, friends and others for help, including with their financial affairs, but sometimes those helpers abuse the trust placed in them. BY NICOLA SLADDEN, BANKING OMBUDSMAN Financial abuse can take the form of: Misusing or stealing from the bank accounts of those in their care pressuring a person to sign a legal document, such as a guarantee or mortgage using a power of attorney in a way that is not in the interests of the person who granted it. Pressure from family member or caregiver Elderly people may face pressure from family members for financial support. For example, an adult child may pressure a parent to guarantee a loan or become a co-borrower on a loan using the parents house as security. If someone is pressuring you to sign a bank document, or is accessing your accounts without your permission, contact your local bank branch. Staff will give you advice on how best to protect yourself and your banking affairs. In doing so, bank staff will also be alert to any unusual activity in your accounts. Suspicions of financial abuse If you suspect an elderly friend or relative is the subject of financial abuse, you may like to raise the subject diplomatically with them and encourage them to contact their local bank branch. Some tentative questions can either allay or confirm your suspicions. You may wish to raise your concerns with a trusted family member. The Office for Seniors runs a free helpline (0800 32 668 65) that gives callers information about elder abuse and also connects them to support services. We also have consumer guides on financial abuse on our website www.bankomb.org.nz. Banking issues when a customer passes away There can also be issues that arise when a bank customer passes away and family members want to access their accounts. In one case, a husband complained to us that his bank had not carried out an instruction to add him as an account owner on all of his wife’s accounts. The husband and wife had previously had separate accounts and, when the wife became terminally ill, she signed an authority to allow her husband to one of her transactional accounts. However, the authority did not cover another term deposits which passed to the wife’s estate. After we looked into it, the husband accepted that the bank could only have added him as an account owner if his wife had given express authority. The Banking Ombudsman offers free and independent advice. A consumer guide on what happens to a customer's accounts when they pass away is available online at bankomb.org.nz along with information on financial abuse of the elderly, deceased customers' accounts and common scams. Common scams targeting bank customers Following some basic precautions will keep your money safe from increasingly sophisticated scammers. Below is some advice from Banking Ombudsman (bankomb.org.nz): You always need to be on your guard when it comes to banking and money matters. That doesn’t mean being suspicious or paranoid. Rather, it means exercising care and maintaining a healthy scepticism towards individuals or companies when you’re online. We recommend you take the following precautions: How to bank safely: • Find out something about the company or individual you are dealing with. Do an internet search, look for reviews, ask for a physical address you can check, and look up the company on the Companies Register. • Check Consumer Protection’s scam alert website. • Check with someone independent and trustworthy before you commit to anything. • Do not give out account details unless the business is established and trusted. • Never accept money into your account for subsequent transfer to others. • Never give out your PIN or internet banking password. • Check your accounts regularly to ensure money is going to the right places. • Report any likely scams to your bank. • When emailing people about making a payment, confirm the payment details using another form of communication (such as by phone). You may not be communicating with the person you imagine, because fraudsters hack into email accounts and assume the account holder’s identity. A quick phonecall can foil such deception. • Contact your bank immediately if you suspect you have been scammed. It may be able to reverse a payment (but that’s unlikely if you’ve authorised the payment and it has gone through). • If you find you've become the victim of a scam and you complain to us, our job is to determine whether your bank is liable for the loss. Phishing scams Scammers try to trick customers into giving out personal information such as bank account numbers, passwords and credit card numbers. This is called a phishing scam. Typically, customers receive an email from what looks like their bank. It will say they need to confirm some personal details, usually their internet banking username and password. It will contain a link to a website that looks like the bank’s but is fake. Customers who enter these details will soon find scammers have accessed their accounts and cleared out their money. Be extremely wary of emails that appear to be from your bank and that ask you to confirm your personal details. Banks will never ask you for your password in emails. Don’t click on links within any email if you have the slightest suspicion about its authenticity. Simply delete the email. If you need to go to your bank’s website, type the address into your browser. If you enter your internet banking password and other details into a fake website, it’s likely you will be liable for any losses because you disclosed this crucial information. Fraudsters may also make phishing phone calls pretending to be your bank, telephone company, government department or a computer company. They may ask you to turn on your computer and download software that gives them access to everything on your computer. A fraudster who has gained access to your computer may be able to steal money from your bank accounts. Be very cautious about unsolicited phone calls, no matter how plausible the caller sounds. Sending money to scammers Scammers can also trick bank customers into sending money to them. How they do this varies. A common way is to ask customers to send a processing fee in order to receive an inheritance or the proceeds of an investment. Another is for someone met on an online dating site to seek financial help. Losses from such scams can run into tens of thousands of dollars. Always be careful if someone you don’t know or have met only online asks for money. It can seldom be recovered. Your bank is very unlikely to be liable for losses you suffer if you give it instructions to send money to someone, it follows those instructions and you later find out that the individual was a scammer. Money mules Another scam is to ask a bank customer – the mule – to accept and forward on money stolen from another victim’s bank account. Scammers convince people there is a legitimate reason for the transfer, such as paying a fee associated with a job application or helping someone with whom they have an online relationship. A bank may reverse a payment from a mule’s account if the money is found to have been stolen. This, in turn, can cause the mule’s account to be overdrawn if there isn’t enough money in the account. The bank will ask the mule to repay the overdrawn sum. In such cases, we consider whether the bank’s terms and conditions allow it to reverse a payment from a mule’s account. We also assess whether the bank had sufficient information to conclude the money was stolen before it reversed the payment. If so, the customer will be held liable for the loss. PIN scams These aim to get customers to disclose their PIN. Scammers have usually already stolen a customer’s wallet, but to use any credit or debit cards they need the PIN. Scammers use different techniques to get intended victims to disclose their PIN. Scammers may, for example, say they are from the bank and have noticed suspicious transactions that indicate a card has been stolen. They will suggest cancelling the card, but doing that, they add, will require the customer to verify his or her PIN in order to authorise the cancellation. The giveaway here is that banks never ask for a customer's PIN. Another technique is to contact a customer and say he or she has won a prize. The customer is asked to make up a four-digit number for identification purposes when collecting the prize. The scammer may be making the call from an ATM and will tap in the number. If not the PIN, the scanner will say that number has been taken, and to pick another. Subconsciously or otherwise, many customers will eventually give out their PIN. By disclosing your PIN to anyone, you are breaching the terms and conditions of your account or card and you will generally be liable for fraudulent transactions. You won’t be liable for fraudulent transactions if you have taken reasonable care of your card and PIN. Never give out your PIN or internet password, your bank will never ask for them. Use our tips above to double-check who you are dealing with.
11 Hot topic: Medical cannabis Both sides of the House of Representatives may have missed a rare opportunity to put party politics aside and work together in the interests of seriously ill people. BY TOM O’CONNOR The ongoing debate on the often confused issue of medical cannabis has been so clouded with mis-information, and pseudo-science that it needs all politicians working together to cut through the humbug and get to the heart of the matter instead of playing silly games with it. The Grey Power New Zealand Federation has formed the view that there is a case for increased access to professionally produced cannabis pharmaceuticals as opposed to home-grown cannabis for smoking or self- medication. In discussions with Ministry of Health officials we have now established a very clear distinction between pharmaceuticals professionally produced from cannabis and raw cannabis plants for smoking or including in homemade food products. It has been known for GET AN EXTRA 10% OFF EVERY 10% PRODUCT, GOLD Discount EVERY DAY ! Register your Super Gold Card number with us and you will get an EXTRA 10% discount off any of our 200 natural health supplements. That’s an extra 10% off our everyday prices and also off those products already on special! g f r health THE HOME OF PNEUMA HEALTH but the medical profession has prescribed properly produced opioids for many years, we could still prohibit home grown cannabis for any purpose and at the same time have affordable access to cannabis CBD based pharmaceuticals. Although our doctors can already prescribe cannabis based medicines they only be sourced from overseas and they are not eligible for Pharmac funding, making it prohibitively expensive and out of reach of most people. We saw the effect of that recently when a Waikato man was prosecuted for growing cannabis to treat his serious his osteoarthritis. Although police said they accepted his explanation they had no option but to prosecute. No law abiding person in genuine need of medical assistance should be put in that position. Also disappointing was the Green Party Bill proposal to allow people to grow their own cannabis for self-medication. There is no escaping the obvisome time that there are several varieties of the plant and they are as different as potatoes and tomatoes or pumpkins and watermelons in that they belong to the same botanical families but have very different qualities and characteristics. heated either by smoking or being included in baking or cooking. Other varieties have minute levels of THC but high levels of CBD which acts as a mild antidepressant and sedative. There is no reliable, peer reviewed, science, so far, to show There is nothing too difficult about providing effective CBD-based medications while maintaining the present prohibition on recreational use of THC. Of the many natural compounds in all varieties of the hemp or marijuana family, two are important in the debate. They are the cannabinoids THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol). Most varieties have different levels of both and it is the variety with high levels of THC which creates the psychoactive high. To release that substance the plant material has to be that cannabis, in any form cures anything. There is good evidence however to show that, properly administered, CBD it is an effective pain inhibitor without many of the nasty side effects of conventional medications such as opioids. In spite of many well researched submissions the Government Bill presently under consideration will only provide a defence against criminal prosecution for terminally ill people, within a year of dying, using cannabis. Making that diagnosis is a guestimate at best and it would still be an offence to grow and supply cannabis. That is clearly nonsense as there are many people with chronic, debilitating pain who would benefit from having access to cannabis CBD based medicines which was promised by the former Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne. The National Opposition had an opportunity here to use the select committee process to present logical and common sense amendments to the Bill but chose instead to present their own Bill which, in spite of being the better option, will have little chance of success. Sadly, during several political debates on the subject entrenched party politics and ignorance of the subject seem to have got in the way of an informed discussion. There is nothing too difficult about providing effective CBD based medications while maintaining the present prohibition on recreational use of THC. 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Helps support, tone, and soothe urinary tissues With Gold Discount Only $39.00 40 Capsules ous fact that those who did grow their own cannabis would never harvest the plants as they would quickly be stolen. For as long as it is illegal to grow and smoke cannabis in New Zealand it is naïve to suggest it can be grown at home for self-medication. Self-diagnosis and selfmedication are hazardous and potentially fatal. That is what we have a medical profession with several centuries of study and knowledge for. There are a number of professionally produced CBD based pharmaceuticals available on the international market, including from Australia, and at least one is available in New Zealand but at significant cost. Professionally produced medical cannabis no different to any other medication derived from plant material and it should be treated as such. We have a right to expect our politicians of all colours will put their differences aside in matters of this importance but they seemed to have failed us this time. SAVE $10.00 SAVE $7.00 SAVE $10.00 FREE FREIGHT for orders over $100 within NZ. Always read the label and use as directed. If symptoms persist, consult your health professional. GO FOR HEALTH LTD P.O. Box 80021, Green Bay, Auckland 0643. TAPS Approval NA 10344
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Grey Power September 2018

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