Cooperation from financial institutions and specialised detectives would assist south-west investigators who are being snowed under by fraud/scammer cases.
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Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Andrew Raven, who oversees crime detectives, said the sheer number of scam reports to police was at the point of overwhelming investigators.
"Scam reports are not 50 per cent of our work, but it's making up a significant percentage and it's an issue that is not going away," he said.
The police boss said just getting information from banks and other financial institutions was a time consuming process, which in one current case had so far taken five months and had still not been resolved.
"When we have the permission from the account holder that should be a simple process, but it's not currently," he said.
"We should be able to walk into a bank and get all relevant documents relating to that account, but that's currently taking on average about three months.
"There are instances where people are losing their life savings."
Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Raven said sextortion, crypto currency, hacking digital wallets, internet marketplaces and false business emails changing bank account details were still the major weapons of scammers.
"We never get any money back," he said. "The only way these scammers are stopped is if a bank holds the money as a suspicious transfer and contacts the account holder for confirmation.
"They should do that a lot more because the money then doesn't have to be recovered."
Reported cases have involved a Portland district resident losing $800,000 from their superannuation and Warrnambool businesses have lost up to $500,000 in false emails changing bank account details.
He said detectives at Warrnambool, Hamilton and Portland were "starting to get snowed under".
UPDATED - Sunday
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