Straight away Sergeant Eric Browne knew something wasn’t right.
When an elderly gentleman came to see him at Gore station speaking in code and talking about local corruption between a Gore bank and Police, Eric was intrigued and very concerned.
It wasn’t until the man asked Eric to check a police ID number, that he had been given over the phone by an ‘overseas-based detective’, that Eric knew he was dealing with someone who may have been the victim of a scam.
Once Eric had convinced him that the ID did not exist, the man opened up on all the details.
He had received a phone call from someone claiming to be a police officer investigating counterfeit currency being produced by the man’s bank.
The ‘detective’ asked the man to read the serial numbers of some cash he had over the phone, then told him they were counterfeit.
He told the man to withdraw an amount of cash, place the bills within the pages of books, then courier them to a London address so investigators would have a good sample to check for counterfeiting.
“Alarm bells were well and truly going off in my mind at this point,” says Eric, “and when he told me he had withdrawn $20,000, I knew we had a significant scam on our hands.”
The man revealed that he had done what was asked, and had packaged up two novels with notes slipped between the pages and couriered them the previous day. Time was of the essence if Eric was going to get the man’s money back.
“We had to act fast, so 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.”
Cutting through the red tape and bureaucracy of retrieving this package was made easier by an important connection at the International Mail Centre.
“It turns out the boss there was a detective for 30 years, and he assured me he would do all he could to get this package," says Eric. "But it really was going to be a close call to catch it in time.”
And it was the closest of calls...
Eric discovered there were three cargo crates going onto the plane that this package would be on.
“The first two had been loaded on already, and with a last ditch search in the third crate, this man’s package was found right at the very bottom.
"It was like something out of a Hollywood script.”
The package was intercepted just in time, meaning the man will be reunited with his money thanks to some very speedy work from Eric and his collaboration with the International Mail Centre.
Investigations are now continuing with the overseas address, so that an entirely different kind of book can be thrown at the offenders.