Two victims have lost such huge sums of money in a sophisticated scam that police have asked Fair Go to warn the public.
"One person's lost $1 million and another $950,000," says Detective Sergeant Tony Darvill of Auckland City Financial Crime Unit, "overnight, in one transaction."
Darvill says the impact on the victims has been life-changing.
"These are people's whole life savings. This could be our grandparents or parents. These are people in their sixties and seventies, just trying to get by and have the best retirement and perhaps set things up for children and grandchildren.
"I don't know how some people recover from that."
The fixed-term deposit scam, as it's called, works by building confidence that the scammers are legitimate financial advisers.
Scammers created a website that claims to be able to broker fixed-term deposits with a major New Zealand bank - in this case, ASB Bank, but SBS and Westpac have also had their names misused lately.
The returns offered were slightly above the market rate; just enough to create interest but not necessarily arouse suspicion that it was a deal too good to be true.
Unlike phishing emails or texts, which are targeted, this scam is more like a long line or a net left to catch the unwary.
"Their Google search has come up with the website, they followed that and put in their details, and contact started," says Darvill.
The scammers has also managed to use a New Zealand bank account, adding a layer of legitimacy to help build confidence. To do that they'd recruited "mules", willing but perhaps unwitting accessories to the crimes.
"Sometimes they've been recruited on social media, for a job. They're unaware they're doing something criminal or harming someone else."
Police are still investigating these cases, but have little hope of recovering the money.
Fixed-term deposit scams have been on the financial regulator's radar for months. The FMA hosts warnings on its website and advice for spotting the signs of a financial scam.
Police encourage anyone who has fallen victim to notify police by calling 105 and also to contact their own bank without delay.
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