Website job offer part of $2.5m cheque scam

A Nigerian scam which could have seen counterfeit cheques with a face value of $2.5 million banked in New Zealand went astray after Customs came up with a plan of its own.

New Zealand Customs Service intercepted 364 counterfeit bank cheques which it believed were sent from Nigeria.

Customs investigations manager Shane Panettiere said at least 12 were heading to an unwitting New Zealand woman who the scammers found through a genuine job search website.

But Customs found the cheques before they arrived in her mail box and then started posing as the woman, exchanging emails with the scammer who commissioned the job.

Customs is warning job-seekers to be cautious of the scam, as it was the first of its kind it had encountered and involved at least 13 people living in New Zealand.

What the people thought was a genuine job offer was actually a scam, Mr Panettiere said.

All had responded to advertisements listed on job sites, and then had been contacted by a company asking them to do a job for them.

In the woman’s case, she would be sent 12 cheques to distribute to 12 addresses in New Zealand.

The people who she was then asked to send the cheques to were required to bank the cheques, keeping a small profit for themselves and sending the rest offshore.

‘‘Fortunately the scam was discovered at an early stage and no financial victims have been identified,’’ Mr Panettiere said.