The man, aged in his late 50s, said the calls started about three weeks ago and the caller left at least four messages on his answering machine.

“They kept leaving messages. They were threatening ones saying ‘if you don’t pay up, you’ll have a warrant for your arrest’,” the Warrnambool man said.

He said the caller claimed to be from the Australian Tax Office. “He even gave a badge number in the end. I had to get these iTune vouchers to pay the amount,” he said. 

“I bought $4000 worth, and then Woolworths stopped me. Woolworths woke up to the fact when I went back to buy another $4000.

“They said we better ring the police. You’ve been scammed.

“The penny started dropping. It didn’t sound right.”

Police officers met him at Woolworths and took him back to his Warrnambool house where they listened to the phone messages.

The Warrnambool man is still out of pocket $4000 after giving the caller all the numbers on the iTune cards.

He said police had told him he was unlikely to ever get the money back.

When the caller later rang back to collect the second lot of iTune card numbers, the Warrnambool man told him it was a scam and the caller hung up.

“They’re just doing the town apparently. I’ve found a scam Australia website and there’s a warning on that too. There’s that many scams flying around it’s not funny,” he said. “They threat a warrant for your arrest and to ring a lawyer. It’s pretty intimidating.

“I just want to make people aware that this is going on here.”

The part-time worker who lives alone said the scam was well-organised.

Warrnambool police Sergeant Cameron Ross said the case had been referred to the Federal Police. “It’s very hard when they get pressured on the phone,” he said.

He said he urged vulnerable or trusting-type of people to talk to those around them when they get out-of-the-blue phone calls like this.

Sergeant Ross said that police got a quite a number of reports from different types of scams.

While he said people could still contact local police, information about potential scams was available at acorn.gov.au.