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.
The apprehension part sounds quite confusing if the offender was in uniform, although he was probably pretending to be a detective. Also, the premise behind this sounds so incredibly far fetched it’s not funny.