Cheque scam hits city | Canterbury News | Local News in Canterbury

An international scam involving counterfeit travellers' cheques and bogus lucrative job offers has hit Christchurch.

At least one person has fallen victim to the Dubai-based scam, which tries to get unsuspecting people to cash travellers' cheques at city banks and then wire some of the money to an account via money transfer agency, Western Union.

The travellers' cheques are sent out by courier to people who have been 'hired' by the scammers to drive overseas tour guides around Canterbury and other parts of New Zealand.

Newspaper advertisements have been running for the past several weeks seeking drivers, who are offered $250 for five hours daily, plus other benefits for the four-day contracts. Any time over that would be paid at $50 an hour.

The people who are hired are then couriered thousands of dollars of counterfeit cheques to pay for vehicle rental.

However, the people who are hired then get a phone call and/or email soon after, saying an error has been made and too much money has been sent out.

A request is then made for money cashed from the travellers’ cheques to be returned via Western Union, which has 170,000 agencies worldwide.

The scam came to light in Christchurch over Christmas when a man tried to cash travellers’ cheques at an ANZ branch.

The teller quickly noticed the cheques were counterfeit because of the quality of the watermark, an ANZ spokeswoman said yesterday.

She said the matter had been referred to the investigations division. All staff had been warned to be vigilant. The man trying to cash the cheques was embarrassed.

American Express was aware of the scam, which has circulated the world for several years in different forms, a spokesman said.

Westpac spokesman Craig Dowling said the scam had been around for several months, but appeared to have been snowballing across New Zealand in the past few weeks.

Mr Dowling said if travellers’ cheques were cashed and then picked up as counterfeit at a later stage in the banking process, the person who had cashed it, even unwittingly, could be liable to pay the bank’s money back.

The travellers’ cheques were blank, meaning it was a scam.

A Christchurch man who responded to a newspaper advertisement for a driving job told The Star yesterday he had always been sceptical.

The offer was from what appeared to be a reputable tour company in England. But when they asked for him to send a scanned copy of his driver’s licence, he became suspicious.

The scammers use legitimate overseas companies’ identities, but alter email addresses to ensure the messages go to them. He didn’t send a copy of his licence.

He then received phone calls from a person in Dubai, confirming he had the position, and was told tour guides from Saudi Arabia would be arriving in Christchurch this weekend.

The man told The Star he sourced a vehicle to transport them and was organising an itinerary.

The scammers told him $600 in travellers’ cheques would be couriered to his home today to pay for the rental vehicle.

However, he received an email yesterday saying one of the tour operators had been killed in a car crash and the trip had been delayed until later this month.

The scammers said they would now send the travellers’ cheques next week.