Facebook frauds have been an expensive problem for some locals this week, Detective Shaun McClintock says.

The number of frauds have increased over the Christmas period, targeting people buying Christmas presents.

“We’ve had a number of complaints, such as the sale of tiny homes in Wānaka.”

He said a handful of locals had lost money - “mainly deposits” - to the scam.

Detective McClintock said the tiny homes fraud was a nation-wide one, which targets specific local community Facebook pages.

“The offenders are in a different city,” he said.

“The fraudsters are very smart and some of them have been doing this for a long time - it’s quite sophisticated.

“A lot of intelligent people .. get caught up in the emotion of a good deal.”

“People shouldn’t buy anything from Facebook sight unseen,” he said.

He said if people suspect a Facebook post is fraudulent they should contact the administrator of the Facebook page to have it removed in the first instance.

Drug bust

Police arrested nine people in a region-wide drug bust in the past week, with a total of 170 grams of cocaine, 40 grams of MDMA, and MDMA pills, worth approximately $88,000 being seized.

Read more: Nine arrested in region-wide drug bust

Drone rules

Detective McClintock also asked locals to be aware of the rules around drones, especially those who may receive a drone for Christmas. 

“It is illegal to fly a drone within four kilometres of an aerodrome or a helipad,” he said.

“We’ve got a lot of helicopters flying around at the moment.”

Find more information on the rules here.

Call 111 when you need an emergency response from police, fire or ambulance.

Call 105 to report things that don’t need urgent police assistance.

Call *555 to report road incidents that are urgent but not life-threatening.

To make an anonymous crime report contact Crime Stoppers.

PHOTO: Wānaka App