Disturbing scam activity has been reported in New South Wales and the national watchdog says data breaches may be involved.
Rose, from Alstonville on the state's north coast, says her 93-year-old neighbour was left traumatised after a scammer persuaded her to withdraw $9,000 cash and arrived at her home that evening to collect it in person.
She said the con man knew where her neighbour banked and claimed he was investigating suspicious activity in her account.
Luckily Rose realised something was amiss and she and her husband were able to send the scammer away before he collected the cash.
"[My neighbour] said to me yesterday that she feels quite violated, her privacy has been tampered with, and she hasn't been anywhere since this incident," Rose said.
Police are investigating.
A similar incident occurred in Evans Head when scammers contacted Dorothy's elderly neighbour.
Those scammers claimed they were from the woman's bank and needed her help setting a trap to catch a crook.
The woman was talked into withdrawing $7,500 cash for scammers to collect from her home that night.
Thankfully the criminals did not show up and a conversation with bank staff next day helped the woman realised she had been hoodwinked.
Both women told the ABC their elderly neighbours were typically very sharp and that the scammers were very convincing.
"[My neighbour] said, 'Had they come, I would have handed over the money'," Dorothy said.
Data breach suspicions
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission deputy director Delia Rickard says this is a variation of a con that has been around for a long time.
She said scammers often called people and asked for their help to catch a crook.
"I haven't heard this particular version," Ms Rickard said.
"It sounds to me like there may have been some data breach somewhere, because it sounds quite localised.
Ms Rickard said there was a range of places on the dark web and elsewhere where lists of phone numbers could be purchased.
"They have things called 'suckers lists' of people who have fallen for scams or nearly have beforehand," she said.
Scammers can also use phone books to target particular regions and random phone number generators to rapidly dial different numbers.
'Throw trust out the window'
Ms Rickard said there were more than 286,000 reports to ScamWatch in 2021 and more than $323 million reported lost to scams.
But given an estimated 13 per cent of victims come forward, Ms Rickard suspects the true figure is closer to $2 billion.
She said scammers would typically contact people on the phone or online and claim to be from a trusted agency such as a bank, utility provider or government agency.
Ms Rickard said the safest way to protect yourself was to hang up and call the purported organisation back on an official contact number.
"Our society runs on trust, but when you're online or on the phone, you just have to throw trust out the window," she said.
Rose and Dorothy requested that their surnames not be published in order to protect the privacy of their neighbours.
