Police have issued a warning about a rise in cryptocurrency scams, with scammers impersonating police officers and cryptocurrency company representatives to steal funds from Kiwis. <\/p>\n
Detective Inspector Stuart Mills said police had received a large number of reports in recent weeks, with some victims having lost millions of dollars. <\/p>\n
Scammers had been posing as detectives, often claiming a victims personal information or identity documents had been found on a person who had been arrested. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“The fake detective directs their questions towards establishing if and how the victim holds cryptocurrency, before arranging for a fake representative from the cryptocurrency company to contact the victim,” Mills said. <\/p>\n
“The fake representative then convinces the victim to hand over their passwords or seed phrases, often through a fake webpage resembling a legitimate cryptocurrency application.” <\/p>\n
Police were now urging anyone who owned cryptocurrency to never share passwords, seed phrases or other sensitive account information with someone they do not know.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of scam is on the rise, and we want the community to be alert,” Mills added. <\/p>\n
“There are instances where legitimate police officers will contact you as part of their duties, but New Zealand Police will never ask you sensitive financial details.” <\/p>\n
He said anyone who was unsure whether a caller was genuine should ask for the officer\u2019s details, hang up, call 105 and request that the officer contact them directly.<\/p>\n
Police also urged people to trust their instincts, speak with a trusted friend or family member if something seems suspicious, and never share their cryptocurrency seed phrase.<\/p>\n
Anyone who believed they had been targeted or fallen victim to a scam was encouraged to report it to police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have issued a warning about a rise in cryptocurrency scams, with scammers impersonating police officers and cryptocurrency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,67,111,139,69,244],"class_list":["post-536264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}