Anton Ognyev reckoned he was pretty savvy about scams having grown up in Ukraine.

"There, you are very alert – you are targeted every day."

But the computer graphics worker, who moved to Wellington nine years ago, was sucked in by scammers who posed as Inland Revenue workers.

Now, he wants others to know how convincing some scams have become.

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He also questions why it seems so easy for scammers, who are really based overseas, to rent local phone numbers through which they can conduct their frauds.

His problems began when Ognyev's wife received a call from someone claiming to be from Inland Revenue.

The caller left a message for Anton saying he was due a tax refund of few thousand dollars and left a local contact phone number and claim number.

Coincidently, Ognyev was expecting a similar-sized refund after filing his tax return through his accountant.

"When you call a Wellington number, you don't expect trouble," he said.

Distracted with work, Ognyev called back and gave his driver's licence details as an "ID check". Then the scammer, who had an Indian accent, asked for some bank account details. Ognyev got suspicious and hung up.

It might not seem like much harm done. But Ognyev knows the scammers could use his identity details to apply for a fraudulent loan in his name which could blot his credit record.

"I got very worried and you need to make lots of calls. It takes up days because you think 'what is going on, what else should I do, should I shut my bank account, call police?' and are you not able to think about other stuff."

He has replaced his driver's licence, and his eftpos card as the scammers also had the last four digits of his bankcard – he assumed from a third-party data breach.

Those digits of a bankcard are stored by online retailers to identify transactions, but can be quoted back to people once in the hands of scammers, to gain victims' trust.

Ognyev said the scammer he spoke to sounded like a well-trained call centre operator.

"The conversation style was very similar to what you have when you call Inland Revenue or any other agency."

International reports suggest many of the so-called "Microsoft tech-support scams" that have plagued Kiwis are run by once-legitimate tech support companies in India that turn to "the dark side" while business is slack.

The scammer was not pushy and didn't immediately make suspicious demands, he says. "They were happy to just get as much information as they could."

Chris Hails from cyber-safety organisation Netsafe said the "Inland Revenue" scam was endemic.

"With people who are 'scam-aware', savvy and clever, often it is just a moment of weakness; you are tired, hungry or in the middle of cooking dinner and for some reason you fall for the initial hook, and then they work you through the process because they are good at what they do."

Ognyev was right to fear his driver's licence ID could be used to perpetuate other frauds, Hails said. Criminals were not just after cash and would use stolen identities for "romance scams" and other frauds.

It didn't take much for foreign scammers to get "04" or "09" phone numbers from the likes of Microsoft-owned Skype or in blocks from telcos, he said.

"There are numerous places you can buy them for legitimate and other purposes and they are virtually untraceable.

"You can contact the 'owner' of the number who has leased it out and have it disconnected but it is like 'whack-a-mole'."

But Hails, like Ognyev, questions whether phone companies are doing enough to identify who rents phone numbers, or to quickly block those that are used for frauds.

The phone number on which Ognyev called back his scammers now plays a recorded message saying it has been disconnected because of "suspected fraudulent activity".

But he said he was told by police that telcos were not very co-operative in shutting such numbers down.

"My concern is how many people get the same call as me, give over some important details and forget about it?"

Hails said Netsafe would "love to see a solution that would allow a central notification of these numbers that could then block scam calls coming into New Zealand".

"The telcos do something similar with mobile text spam, so I can't help but think there must be the technical capability to do it."

Telecommunications Forum chief executive Geoff Thorn said that if telecommunications firms found out frauds were being carried out through local phone numbers, they would take action to block those numbers.

He wasn't aware of concerns regarding the identity checks carried out on people who leased numbers, or of undue delays having them disconnected if they were used for fraud.

The industry body administers New Zealand's phone number administration deed and was the right one for people to approach if they had concerns, he said.

"This is the first time it has been raised with me as an issue. If [Netsafe] is seeing major problems then they should be talking to us."