Police issue warning following rise in phone scam cases

[John Zoetebier]

Police are warning the public to be vigilant and wary of calls from phone scammers following a rise in complaints recently which have seen some victims lose tens of thousands of dollars.

Detective Sergeant Kelly Corby from the Auckland City Financial Crime Unit says an investigation, named Operation Hyattsville, is looking into more than 20 complaints from victims who have lost money in the past couple of months to phone scammers operating overseas.

One of these victims, 80-year-old Auckland City resident Marion, shares her story about how she was conned by the scammers in a video posted today on the Auckland City District Police Facebook page.

Marion had $10,000 taken from her account after a caller convinced her that there was an urgent issue with her Spark account and they needed to access her computer remotely to fix the issue.

The convincing scammer asked Marion to download the Teamviewer application which allowed them to access her computer before asking for her banking details.

Fortunately, Marion’s bank got in touch after noticing suspicious banking activity and the money was able to be recovered.

Detective Sergeant Corby says unfortunately in most instances the victims are not as lucky as Marion, with several million dollars lost by Kiwis to these offshore scammers in the past few months alone.

“We are not talking about small amounts of money. On average, each victim has lost around $30,000 and these losses are absolutely devastating for our victims.

More information at:
https://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/police-issue-warning-following-rise-phone-scam-cases

 

 

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