A man who scammed people out of nearly $300,000 by pretending to be a police officer has been arrested.
On Monday the 25-year-old man, a UK national, was chased by police through Auckland central on foot.
The scam involved a call to a landline by someone pretending to be a police officer and providing a fake badge number.
There were 18 Aucklanders, aged between 56 and 90, with the majority over 80, allegedly duped out of money.
“The scam will always involve this so-called officer asking for financial information or asking you to withdraw cash to be collected as part of an investigation into banks,” Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Bolton said.
Nice to hear of a scammer getting caught for once.
The cynic in me says, this was more about the pretending to be a police officer, rather than the scams…
You might be onto something. But also most scams originate from overseas, this guy was dumb enough to do it in NZ and apparently did something that led police to where there could be a foot chase.
One of the reasons people turned against Al Capone was because his men impersonated the police, it’s taken seriously for a very good reason.