Published: 4:39PM Thursday March 31, 2011 Source: ONE News

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/kiwis-caught-up-in-money-laundering-scheme-4095199

A new internet scam with a charity link is targeting New Zealanders.

Police said that in the scam potential victims receive an unsolicited email that has a link to a genuine US charity working to eradicate poverty in Mexico.

However, Detective Sergeant Dave Grace of Waikato Police Fraud said there was a link further down the email with a request to set up a bank account to receive donations.

He said the email recipient is told to keep 10% of the donation as an administration fee and to forward the remainder through a money wiring service.

But not only is the donated money "virtually untraceable", Grace said victims were being caught up in an elaborate off-shore money laundering scheme.

Grace said police were also becoming increasingly concerned about agencies providing telephone numbers with a 09 dialling code and the prefix 889 followed by four digits.

In one case a victim received an unsolicited email from a group falsely claiming to be from the Windows Help Support Department.

The victim was told their computer had a virus and they should forward their bank details to arrange payment to cure the virus.

Police enquiries with Telecom had revealed the prefix 889 belonged to phone numbers on-sold to IT providers who then sell them on again.

"While we can't say all numbers starting with 09 889 are involved in suspicious activity we can certainly say there has been significant enough numbers of complaint for us to feel a need to warn the public," Grace said.

"The bottom line in these situations is to be very wary of giving out your bank details, PIN numbers or other information.

"At the end of the day if things appear too good to be true they probably are and if you are contacted about a service you haven't subscribed to it's probably a scam so contact police."