A plot "like something out of a Hollywood script" — involving stolen cash, secret codes and "local corruption" — has come to Gore after an older man scammed out of $20,000 had his money returned thanks to quick thinking by police — and just in the nick of time.
Sergeant Eric Browne's alarm bells were immediately set off when a man came into the police station speaking in code and talking about "local corruption" between a Gore bank and the police.
When the man asked the officer to check a police ID number given over the phone by an "overseas-based detective", Browne realised he may have been the victim of a scam, police said.
After convincing the man the ID did not exist, the victim revealed he had received a phone call from a person claiming to be an officer investigating counterfeit currency being produced by the man's bank.
The "detective" then asked the man to read the serial numbers of some cash he had over the phone, before telling him they were counterfeit.
The man was told to withdraw $20,000 in cash and place the bills within the pages of books, before sending them to a London address to provide investigators with a good sample size to check for counterfeiting.
"Alarm bells were well and truly going off in my mind at this point," Browne said.
"When he told me he had withdrawn $20,000, I knew we had a significant scam on our hands."
The man had followed the instructions and couriered the novels the previous day, meaning police "had to act fast" to retrieve the cash.
"I immediately got his tracking number, saw that it would be going out through Auckland International Airport, and reached out to the International Mail Centre there," Browne said.
Thankfully, the boss at the International Mail Centre had been a detective for 30 years, making the red tape and bureaucracy of retrieving the package easier.
"He assured me he would do all he could to get this package," Browne said, "but it really was going to be a close call to catch it in time."
Browne learned there were three cargo crates going onto the plane the package would be on, two of which had already been loaded when police arrived.
"With a last-ditch search in the third crate, this man's package was found right at the very bottom," he said.
"It was like something out of a Hollywood script."
The package was intercepted and the man will be reunited with his money.
An investigation into the overseas scam is ongoing.
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