The chief executive of a Northland iwi was left laughing after coming across an email from a scammer who had attempted to use te reo Maori to fleece her.
Anahera Herbert-Graves, chief executive of Te Runanga a Iwi o Ngati Kahu, said she had received several scams from people claiming to be lawyers for unknown dead relatives wanting to leave her millions. However, when she came across a message from a scammer this week who appeared to have used Google Translate in an attempt to write an email in te reo Maori, she was amused.
"Oh it's bad, it's so bad. Anyone who was even remotely fluent in te reo Maori would probably know it's fake because it's just a mess. Tenses are scrambled and verbs become adverbs," she said.
After attempting to understand the message, Mrs Herbert-Graves discovered the scam was from someone claiming to be the lawyer of the late Dr. B. Roma NGATIKAHU who wanted to deposit $9,600,000 into her account.
The email includes letters that are not in the Maori alphabet and words that made no sense.