Police are warning the public about a group of international scammers, after they recently targeted a local West Auckland firm.
Police said the scammers have been able to take over $800,000, through the alleged purchase of shares in an overseas mining firm.
The scammers would usually cold call their targets with an offer that sounded too good to be true, and would have sourced contact details from publicly-available shareholder lists, police said.
Police said the latest scam involved a company called 'Nomura Financial' based in Hong Kong and 'Lantern Mining' in China.
The scammers have professional-looking emails, documents with corporate letterheads, and have created sophisticated web pages with photos, articles and financial advice.