A foreign national has stolen the identity of those killed in NZ disasters including Pike River.

An Iraqi with Canadian citizenship fled the country after stealing the names of Christchurch earthquake, Pike River Mine and Carterton balloon crash victims to buy goods online.

In recent months, police told the families of the deceased that their identities were used in the fraud.

Detective Senior Sergeant Iain Chapman, of the Auckland City District Financial Crime Unit, confirmed the thief obtained the 29 identities in February 2012 from the A Memory Tree website.

The deceased died in the Christchurch earthquake on February 22, 2011, the Pike River Mine explosion on November 19, 2010, and the Carterton balloon disaster on January 7, 2012.

The website is New Zealand's largest death information website and allows visitors to set up remembrance pages.

The man used the identities to open online accounts with a Telco provider. Once the accounts were opened, he ordered high-end smartphones and charged them against the false accounts.

The fraud was identified quickly and the accounts were shut down in March and April, Chapman said. The Telco made a complaint to Police in August, 2012.

However, by then the offender had left NZ. Immigration records showed he left in May, 2012, Chapman said.

"The police investigation file is still active. There is no information to suggest the person in question has returned to NZ since his departure in May 2012."

A routine audit of files in February had "identified an opportunity" for staff to liaise with the families of victims targeted by the offender.

"The families/next of kin were in several different parts of New Zealand so staff in the appropriate districts were tasked with the notifications, which were carried out as soon as they were able."

Tim Elms, whose daughter Teresa McLean died in the CTV building collapse in the Christchurch earthquake, said bereaved families had enough to cope with without dealing with a low-down fraud using the names of loved ones.

"It's appalling, just awful and it's a shame he was not arrested."

Bernie Monk, the spokesman for the Pike River families, said the use of the names was disgusting but identity theft was a fact of life and people had to be careful.

"It's quite sad."

A Memory Tree founder and managing director Sue Skeet was unaware her website had been misused by the offender when contacted.

The site, which has about 500,000 remembrance pages, started in 2009 and attracts about 150,000 visitors each month.

"I find it totally repulsive. Unfortunately you will always get people who do that sort of thing. We have checks in place to ensure that no-one recorded on our site is bogus. We have had people who have tried to create pages for people who are alive. There are some pretty nasty people out there," Skeet said.

"But anybody could walk into cemetery and do the same thing. At least with the website an organisation can come onto the site and immediately check if somebody is deceased."

Businesses and organisations needed to do more to check the credentials of people buying online, she said.