But for the actions of her Merimbula solicitor, Hugo White, and St George Bank, Bega, the woman would have lost the money.

The scammer who called himself Kevin Lee, purported to be part of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (a real organisation) and rang the woman saying he had been appointed by the government to check on the NBN and Google. He claimed to be helping to stop people like her from getting scammed.

Mr White said the scammer spent over two hours on the phone and sent an introductory letter verifying "his authenticity".

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Mr Lee said the government would put $15,000 in her account and take it out again to verify how the transaction was handled. He even sent a supposed screen shot of the money in the account. The woman was told to take out the $15,000 in cash and put it back in via another bank but not to discuss the matter with anyone, given the secrecy surrounding the investigation.

"Mr Lee emailed my client showing her bank account statements which evidenced her account had doubled in value. My client was told this was the government's money going in and her money would be withdrawn and put in a safe place. She was at no risk - it was only the government's money that was being used, according to the scammer," Mr White said.

Suspicions were raised at St George Bank, Bega, Mr White said, over the large amount of cash the woman was wanting to take out, and staff there advised her to contact her solicitor.

"Fortunately my client mentioned this activity to my secretary who immediately smelled a rat. I rang Mr Lee, in my client's presence, and as soon as I said I was a solicitor he terminated the call.

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"It was only then my client was convinced she had fallen victim to a very professional scammer and wasn't in fact being employed by the government to stop such scams," Mr White said.

"The local bank clerk told me they have at least one customer a week - in one local bank - being attacked by scammers of the likes of Mr Lee," he added.

Mr White is aware of another local woman who has lost $4000 to a scammer.

The Australian Scamwatch site has advice on how to protect yourself against scams, where to get help and how to report a scam.

Never give your passwords to anyone over the phone(whoever they claim to be) and never be persuaded to download software onto your computer from someone who has called you.

So far this year scammers have stolen more than $7.2 million from Australians by gaining access to home computers, an increase of 184 per cent compared to the same period last year.

According to the ACCC's Scamwatch, almost 6,500 Australians have reported phone calls from scammers trying to convince them to download software that gives access to home computers and their bank accounts.

Commonly called remote access scams, scammers pretend to be from well-known organisations such as Telstra, eBay, NBN Co, Amazon, banks, government organisations, police, and computer and IT support organisations. They create a sense of urgency to make you give them access to your computer via remote access software.

If you are unsure about a phone call, hang up, independently source the contact details for the organisation and verify with them the authenticity of the call or communication you received.