A 94-year-old Alexandra man was scammed out of $19,000 from an online fraudster last Friday night.

Senior Constable Graham Perkins said the fraudster convinced the man to download two applications onto his laptop and then took control of his computer and mobile phone.

After that he was able to access the man’s bank accounts and transferred the money.

Snr Const Perkins said the man reported the incident to Alexandra police in person, and the BNZ fraud squad was contacted and his bank accounts frozen.

Police have also obtained access to his landline to trace the number the fraudster was calling from, and enquiries were ongoing. For more information on how to identify and report scammers see here

Emergency services from across the district were called to two false alarms in Queenstown at the weekend, after the public noticed parachutes falling from the sky.

Snr Const Perkins said the Westpac Rescue Helicopter, St John and Fire Emergency NZ all attended the first false alarm, after members of the public thought a skydiver had fallen to the ground.

After enquiries with NZONE Skydive, it was discovered a faulty parachute had simply been cut free and later located in bramble.

But a second emergency services callout a day later resulted in Coastguard and Land Search and Rescue (LandSAR) searching for a skydiver in Lake Wakatipu, after reports of somebody in the water.

Snr Const Perkins said NZONE contacted emergency services to say everyone was okay, and it was simply another case of a faulty parachute let go.

Snr Const said given the huge waste of resources and time by emergency services in both situations, an agreement was made that the sky dive company needed to alert authorities in the first instance if that happened again.

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