Suffolk Police are renewing pleas for residents not to give out personal or banking information after receiving several calls from members of the public in the Halesworth area.

Police are taking more reports of a scam where callers pose as officers to get you to give them account and PIN information.

On Sunday and Monday night, police received several calls from members of the public in the Halesworth area reporting they had been contacted.

In at least three incidents the resident quickly became suspicious and no details were given but in a fourth information was provided and bank cards handed over to a man who called at the address to collect them.

A 48-year-old woman from Halesworth rang police around 9.20pm on Sunday night concerned she may have been scammed.

She told officers she had taken a call from a man who had claimed to be a detective with police in London who said they had two people in custody who had been using her bank and credit cards.

The man told her to hang up and dial the number on the back of her cards. She did this – but while she thought she was talking to her bank, she was still actually connected to the scammers.

The man then told her that her accounts had been cleared out, that she would need to ‘PIN block’ her account and that a courier would come and collect her cards ‘for analysis’.

A short time later a man arrived to collect her cards which were handed over.

The woman was also advised not to tell anyone or to access her account as this may alert the offenders.

As previously publicised, this was all a scam – and the woman later found hundreds of pounds had been taken.

Police are renewing calls for residents not to give out bank, card or personal information.

Police and your bank with never ask for your PIN, bank card or bank account details over the phone – never give these details out.

The police will never call you and ask you to withdraw money from your account, and will never ask you to handover bank cards or cash to give to a courier or taxi driver, regardless of how convincing the caller may seem.

If you receive such a call leave the landline for at least five minutes to make an outside call. Fraudsters will keep the line open and have been known to play ring tones, hold music or a recorded message down the phone so the victim believes they are making a call to a legitimate number. Use a friend’s or neighbour’s telephone instead.