Men with European names and thick Indian accents have tried to convince an Otago woman to pay $249 for what police suspect is a fictitious bank refund secured by a fictitious refund agency.
The men told Beverley Fleming last Thursday afternoon they worked for a company called Reclaim Experts and that her bank owed her a $3600 refund.
All she had to do to get it was take a cheque to the nearest Post Shop.
The Mosgiel Post Shop would have been closed by the time she finished the telephone call, so she gave the caller her mobile phone number.
She did not hear from him again.
"Maybe they try and catch you unawares, so they don't get back to you if you have time to think about what happened.
"It's a good thing the alarm bells were ringing."
Mrs Fleming detailed an approach similar to scams reported in the Counties-Manukau area this month, where callers were contacted by people from the so-called New Zealand Council of Bank Reclaim Experts.
It was also similar to a scam involving callers from the Department of Reclaim Experts, the Council of Bank Reclaim Experts, and the Australia Council that was reported in Australia last month.
Mrs Fleming said she was telephoned by "Eric Brown" of Reclaim Experts.
He said she might be owed a bank refund, and gave her an Auckland postal address and telephone number.
He had her name and address, and he asked for her date of birth.
He gave her a claim approval password and asked her to telephone his manager, "Jim Dixon".
She called Jim Dixon, who asked her what bank she used - which "was strange, seeing as how they'd already said I might be due a refund".
She gave the man the name of a bank, and he very quickly said she was owed $3600.
Jim Dixon said a man called James Church would deliver the cheque to her home and that he would go with her to the Post Shop, where she would deposit her $249 cheque.
Mrs Fleming finished the call before this was fully explained, but the other scams suggested she would have been told to make an international credit transfer.
Constable Jason Braid, of Mosgiel, said the call itself was not an offence.
However, he warned people to be vigilant if contacted and not to hand over any money.
"If it sounds too good to be true, it is."
He would also be interested in talking to James Church, if he existed.
Police are also warning of a telephone scam targeting rural people in North Otago and South Canterbury.
A male and a female, claiming to be from the Department of Internal Affairs, had been contacting people and telling them they were entitled to refunds due to changes in banking legislation, Constable Craig Bennett, of Kurow, said.
The values being stated were in the "thousands" and they were claiming that for about $300, deposited in an account, it could be "sorted", Const Bennett said.
Police had received multiple calls about the scam, including one from a woman who nearly deposited the money.
