A group of twenty officers from the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary ended their Financial Crime Investigation Course at the Grand Papua Hotel in Port Moresby on Friday.
The two-week program, was organized by officers from the Police Training division and the Australian Federal Police. The training aims to help them in their future policing endeavors by improving their investigative abilities.
The team made up of twenty participants, includes police officers from the NCD Criminal Investigation Division, Bomana Police College, National and Provincial Fraud, and Public Prosecutors' office representatives.
The two-week training taught the participants how to identify crimes that were connected to scams that resulted in fraudulent activities. The majority of online crimes that are regularly committed these days involve money.
The training helped the participants to also use appropriate tools to investigate scams and identify scammers.
Participants were grateful for the opportunity to improve their investigative skills and said they are now better placed to investigate online scams.
Course Coordinator, Sergeant Adrian Holt expressed his satisfaction with the participation and level of interest in the subject matter. Sergeant Holt is optimistic that the participating officers will make some solid arrests to secure good convictions after the training.
A satisfied participant said when they received scam related complaints in the past, they only looked into the allegations made and would never follow up to investigate the matter thoroughly.
This he said was because they did not have the knowledge and skills to investigate crimes of this nature and did not know what resources to employ and the best way to gather additional evidence to strengthen their case file. He claimed that the training had greatly helped them to improve their investigation skills.