WELLINGTON - New Zealand Police have no offence category for cryptocurrency fraud, no national standard for what happens to a report once it leaves headquarters, and no recorded process for taking those cases across a border.
That is not an inference.
It is what Police confirmed, and in several places refused to answer, in response to an Official Information Act request filed by Cryptocurrency NZ in March. The reply arrived 117 days later, after two extensions and a complaint to the Ombudsman.
A New Zealander who reports a crypto scam is still asked for transaction records, wallet addresses, TXIDs and the messages they exchanged with whoever took the money.
Victims who have done this describe the same sequence: the file goes in, and nothing they can see happens after that.
They are already the minority.
Netsafe and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance found that only 10 per cent of New Zealand scam victims take it to Police. Of those who reported anywhere, 64 per cent either saw no action or never learned the outcome.
Police cannot say what happens either.
The March request had five parts. Beyond the missing offence category, the missing national standard and the missing cross-border process, Police also confirmed they hold no data on referrals or arrests, and no internal assessment of whether cryptocurrency fraud is different from any other kind of crime.
Several parts were refused on the basis that the documents do not exist.
Netsafe and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance put total New Zealand scam losses at around $3 billion in 2025, close to 0.75 per cent of GDP, with crypto as the payment channel in 12 per cent of cases.
Police have had dedicated cryptocurrency capability since 2015.
Eleven years on, nothing records what it has achieved - or if any of it works.
Where a report goes, and what it becomes
Police have no offence code for cryptocurrency fraud, so a report is filed under whatever else fits - usually blackmail, extortion or fraud. Nothing marks it as crypto.
The only way Police can pull those files back together is a keyword search: “Crypto”, “Bit coin”, “Bitcoin”, “Alt coin” and “Altcoin”, run across two offence groups, blackmail and extortion in one, fraud and related offences in the other.
There is no category to sort by, so any attempt to see whether the same method is being used on different victims, or whether one offender appears across multiple reports, starts with that search. That is also the only way to look at them all together.
Everything downstream inherits the problem.
Police said they do “not have the capacity to conduct the manual review of individual files that would be necessary to accurately verify the figures.”
That search returned 990 occurrences between January 2020 and March 2026.
Police attached a warning to their own number.
Because it comes from a keyword search, it “can only be considered indicative, as the figures may include cases where cryptocurrency was mentioned without relating to the offending.”
There is a further problem. Most of it is not fraud.
Of the 990 occurrences that search produced, 701 sat in the blackmail and extortion group and 289 in fraud. The best figure Police can produce for cryptocurrency crime is mostly not fraud.
Another agency counts it directly.
The Financial Markets Authority, which does not investigate crime, recorded approximately 586 scam reports involving cryptocurrency in 2025. Police recorded 162 and cannot verify the figure.
The true scale is unknown.
Police cannot verify their own number, and neither figure counts the scams that are never reported.
What is not in dispute is that the losses are substantial: Police warned in July that a single impersonation campaign had cost New Zealanders millions of dollars in a matter of weeks.
A category nobody can track is a category nobody can measure, control, or argue for.
How it gets assessed
There is no algorithm deciding this. Police do not use an automated triage system, and a real person within the New Zealand Police assesses every report of alleged offending.
That person is supported by a scoring tool, the Initial File Assessment. Police say it helps determine whether viable lines of enquiry exist. It measures three things.
How strong the suspicion is
- No suspect at all - 0
- Someone who could be responsible - 2
- Someone a complainant believes is responsible - 5
- A confirmed offender - 10
How well the suspect can be described
- Nothing - 0
- A general description - 2
- A detailed description with unique features - 5
- A known identity or forensic match - 7
Vehicle
- No detail - 0
- A description - 1
- A description with a partial registration - 2
- A full registration with a matching description - 7
Seven points produce a recommendation to send the file forward for investigation.
Below seven “indicates insufficient evidence or non-viable lines of enquiry,” unless staff add something that justifies going further, such as security footage, bank account details or forensic evidence.
For fraud, Police said staff may also weigh the amount lost or if the victim is vulnerable.
There is a route for bigger cases. Where offending looks repeated, organized or part of a wider pattern, Police said staff take that into account, and “cases may be escalated or referred for further analysis."
“Not all factors within the IFA will be relevant to every offence type,” Detective Superintendent Dave Lynch, Director of the Financial Crime Group, told CNZ.
“For example, many online offences, including cryptocurrency-related fraud, may have no vehicle, physical scene, or identifiable witness connected to the offending.”
Two of the three criteria are built around things a cryptocurrency scam does not produce. A report that arrives with wallet addresses, transaction hashes, and exchange records scores on none of them.
“Each report is assessed on its own merits, taking into account the evidence available and the investigative opportunities that exist,” Lynch said.
“The absence of a particular factor does not, in itself, determine the outcome of an assessment. This approach is no different from the assessment of other fraud, theft, or dishonesty offences involving traditional currency.”
He added that “the potential to identify, trace and recover stolen funds is an important consideration when assessing investigative opportunities.”
Then the report disappears into a District
Once a file is transferred to a Police District, it is prioritized on local demand.
That prioritization, Police said, “is not standardised nationally and may differ between Districts.”
New Zealand has twelve Districts. The specialist cryptocurrency staff, between 8 and 12 of them nationally, sit in two units at Police headquarters in Wellington.
Asked to compile how prioritization differs across the country, Police refused under section 18(f) of the Act. Producing the comparison would mean manually reviewing records from multiple sources in each of the twelve Districts, which cannot be done “without substantial collation or research.”
No national picture exists, and none can be assembled without a file-by-file trawl.
Then it hits an international border
Scam reports from Cryptocurrency NZ’s community consistently describe offshore operators: foreign accents, broken English, and companies registered outside New Zealand. When an approach appears to come from within New Zealand, the industry often regards it with greater sophistication.
Cryptocurrency NZ asked Police what processes or triggers exist for engaging international partners such as Interpol, the FBI or Five Eyes networks in cross-border cryptocurrency matters, and whether any minimum threshold applies.
“There are no typical processes or triggers for engaging partner agencies from overseas jurisdictions specifically in respect of fraud cases involving cryptocurrency, nor is there a minimum threshold for Police to request assistance from such agencies in those cases,” the response said.
Such matters are considered case by case. Both parts of the question were refused under section 18(e) of the Act, “as the documents alleged to contain the information requested do not exist.”
Lynch said the mechanisms exist regardless of whether they are written down.
“NZ Police works closely with a range of domestic and international partners to address fraud and other forms of transnational offending,” he said.
“Mechanisms for international engagement already exist and may include police-to-police cooperation, mutual legal assistance processes, information-sharing arrangements, and engagement through established international law enforcement networks, depending on the nature of the offence, jurisdiction, and operational requirements.”
Police said they work directly with cryptocurrency exchanges to issue preservation or freezing requests, obtain account and transaction information, and trace funds using blockchain analysis tools.
Police told Cryptocurrency NZ they “have been involved in several cases where stolen assets have been successfully recovered for victims however this is very rare due to jurisdictional challenges and the unregulated nature of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”
When asked how many such cases there had been, and whether any overseas-based cryptocurrency scammer had ever been prosecuted following a referral or intelligence from New Zealand Police, the media team said the question would require an Official Information Act request.
Cryptocurrency NZ filed that request on 14 August, seeking figures on recoveries, referrals and overseas prosecutions. A response is due by 11 September.
Police have been doing this since 2015
Police are not new to cryptocurrency.
Lynch said a dedicated cryptocurrency investigations capability was established within the Financial Crime Group in 2023 “to support money laundering investigations and asset recovery,” complementing “an existing dedicated cryptocurrency capability” within the National Criminal Investigations Group.
Asked when that earlier capability began, Police said the National Criminal Investigations Group, part of the High Tech Crime Group, has had capability in the cryptocurrency space since 2015.
They use two commercial, off-the-shelf blockchain analysis tools, Chainalysis and TRM.
“The capabilities of these teams are comparable to those in similar jurisdictions,” Lynch said.
He also said Police “continuously reviews its resources, capabilities and operating models to ensure we are well placed to respond to emerging crime trends and evolving risks, including cryptocurrency-related offending.”
“Like all public sector organisations, Police must make decisions about how resources are prioritised across a range of competing operational pressures.”
Against that, the Financial Crime Group holds no data on the number of referrals, joint operations or arrests relating to cryptocurrency cases.
Refused under section 18(g), on the basis the information is not held.
Police also hold no internal assessment, report or guidance on whether cryptocurrency fraud presents unique investigative challenges compared with traditional fraud, or on any differences in how staff perceive or handle it.
Refused under section 18(e). The document does not exist.
Eleven years of dedicated capability, and no document exists recording whether this kind of crime is different from any other kind. And whether these capabilities are making a difference.
Cryptocurrency NZ asked why this data is not recorded.
Police did not answer, and said the question required an OIA request.
What it would take
Netsafe chief online safety officer Sean Lyons said the problem is that nobody sees the whole thing.
“The person affected may be in New Zealand, the scammer may be somewhere else entirely, the initial contact may have happened on one platform, and the money may have passed through several different services or jurisdictions. No single organisation necessarily sees that whole journey.”
His answer to what would change that is coordination.
“One of the biggest opportunities is stronger information sharing and coordination between agencies, financial institutions, online platforms, cryptocurrency services and international counterparts.”
“A platform might see the initial contact, a bank or cryptocurrency service might see the movement of money, and another organisation might receive the eventual report. Connecting those pieces earlier gives us a much better opportunity to disrupt the scam.”
He said the burden currently sits in the wrong place.
“If our main defence is hoping the person being targeted recognises the scam and reports it before they send money, we are placing too much of the burden on the person who is being manipulated.”
“The goal should be to make scams harder to carry out successfully, rather than simply expecting New Zealanders to become better at spotting them.”
Lyons also said people should report even when recovery looks unlikely.
“Those reports can help build a picture of how particular scams are operating and potentially help prevent others from being targeted.”
That picture has nowhere to form.
There is no offence category for these reports, no national standard for what happens to them once they leave headquarters, and no record of what any of it produced.
The only way to see them together is a keyword search Police say cannot be verified.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance, which produced the New Zealand research with Netsafe, sets out the same fix in institutional terms.
Its recommendations include building “an international network of national anti-scam centres, combining law enforcement, cybersecurity, and private sector expertise,” and creating “a global scam investigation and prosecution network to target organized fraud groups across jurisdictions.”
Both describe machinery for pursuing offenders across borders.
New Zealand Police have confirmed no documented process for that exists here.
Police may be right that their capability matches other countries, that the triage tool works on the merits, that the international mechanisms are there when needed.
Nobody can check. The records that would show either way were never kept.
Cryptocurrency NZ contacted New Zealand’s Minister of Police, Mark Mitchell, on 5 August, asking whether the government considers the current framework adequate for the scale of cryptocurrency fraud affecting New Zealanders, whether any policy work is underway on cross-border coordination, and whether capability is included in recent Police budget allocations.
They were followed up on 11 August, and again by phone on 20 August.
Nothing came back.
Cryptocurrency NZ filed a further Official Information Act request on 14 August, asking how many cryptocurrency cases have ended in a recovery for a New Zealand victim, how many have been referred to an overseas agency, and how many of those led to a prosecution.
A response is due by 11 September.