Congratulations - You've Just Won $1 Million ...

... please send us your bank account details and credit card number to confirm your identity and claim your prize!

Please note, however, that you won't receive any prize whatsoever. You WILL, however, discover that amounts have been charged to your credit card and there's someone - quite possibly Nigerian, or posing as such - running around out there using your identity.

In my capacity of Minister of Consumer Affairs, I was this week called upon to launch Fraud Awareness Week - a joint initiative by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and the Commerce Commission to help people identify, and protect themselves and others, from scams.

I would much rather have preferred to announce that we're beating the scammers, that scams had been eliminated, and that no one would ever lose out to a scam again. Sadly, however, that simply isn't the case.

The truth is that - unless we're vigilant - more New Zealanders will be tricked by the many schemers and fraudsters at work in our communities and overseas.

From lottery and ‘phishing' schemes, to identity theft and romance scams, there appears to be a never-ending queue of deceitful individuals out there trying everything they can to obtain our bank account details and money.

While there is never a good time to be cheated, the current financial situation means New Zealanders can ill-afford to lose their hard-earned money. It also means that the queue of fraudsters will grow - and the schemes will become grow more sophisticated and convincing.

There are many scams around; readers will be familiar with the Nigerian emails to banks or individuals seeking credit card or bank account details. Media has reported of a group of UK men who offered to do asphalting for cash - up to $20,000 was paid for the work, some of which was so substandard the victims had to pay legitimate companies to redo it.

Other scams have included Irish itinerants selling defective generators from a van - complete with fake invoices from a non-existent overseas company - and people being contacted and asked for credit card details to confirm their identity for a prize they've supposedly won.

Most of the scams we see here originate in other countries - this makes them hard to track, and makes it virtually impossible to recover money once it is sent overseas.

And scams cost the country a lot - around $487 million a year, in fact. Using British and Australian experience, we are able to calculate that around six percent of New Zealanders - more than 240,000 people - are scammed each year, losing an average $2,500 each.

As such, the Consumer Affairs Ministry and the Commerce Commission work as part of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce - made up of 19 Australian and New Zealand government agencies - to reduce the incidence and impact of scams.

Each year, Fraud Awareness Week is timed to coincide with other global consumer fraud prevention activities. Consumers are able to access information on how to spot and protect themselves from scams.

While aware that scams exist and we like to think they happen to others, but we're ALL at risk. Scams target each and every one of us - but we can fight back. First, we must know how to identify a scam - which can be defined as:

"a misleading or deceptive business practice where you receive an unsolicited or uninvited contact - by email, letter, phone or text - and false promises are made to con you out of money."

Once we've recognised the scam for what it is we can beat the scammers by not responding to them. By responding, we let the scammer know we're there - ignoring them will likely fool them into believing we don't even exist - and if we don't ‘exist' they can't take our money. The next step is to report the scam on the Consumer Affairs Ministry's ‘Scamwatch' website ( www.scamwatch.govt.nz) so that others can avoid falling into the trap.

Scammers and fraudsters prey on the unwary and it cannot go on. Together we can all work together to beat them. We can outsmart them - and remember: if a deal sounds too good to be true then, chances are, it probably is.

Lest We Forget - The Iran-Contra Affair
Perhaps the best known example of military fraud in living memory is that of the infamous Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair.

The Iran-Contra Affair began as a programme of shipping weapons to politically moderate Iranians via Israel. It developed, however, into a straight arms-for-hostages deal following the capture of 52 US Embassy employees by Hezbollah.

At the time, Oliver North was a Lieutenant Colonel on the National Security Council. He was later convicted for his part in the scheme - illegally channelling profits from the arms sales to the Contras, anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.

Although North's convictions were later vacated, the affair left its stain. North ran for the Senate as a Republican candidate in Virginia in 1994, but was defeated by Democratic rival Charles Robb after Virginia's Senator - Republican John Warner - endorsed an independent candidate. North was defeated by just three percentage points.

As a result of the Iran-Contra affair, the Javits Bill was introduced - this has to be passed by congress at the start of every year and controls arms sales in and out of the US.