He said he was a maintenance worker for Telecom (later rebranded as Spark) and was there to repair a faulty phone line.
The pensioner believed him and let him in. While inside, the man took her credit card and an Eftpos card she was looking after for her 92-year-old sister, who suffered from dementia.
After he left, he called the 90-year-old a number of times from pay phones seeking payment for the "work" he had carried out and eventually managed to obtain the PIN numbers to the cards. Over the course of a month the elderly sisters' cards were used 94 times at cash machines across Auckland to withdraw a total of $27,500 from their accounts.
The 92-year-old died shortly after the man was arrested.
He is well known to police and over the past decade he has been repeatedly sent to prison for stealing large amounts of money from elderly women. His oldest known victim to date is 94 and most of the women, who police say are targeted because they are "vulnerable", live in retirement villages or rest homes.
He has managed to pilfer more than $100,000 from numerous pensioners after tricking his way into their homes and stealing their cash and credit cards while they were distracted.
He usually tells his victim he is there to carry out maintenance for particular companies -- including Auckland Council or Watercare -- or that he was following their car and noticed a strange mechanical problem he wanted to alert them to.
After he has stolen their cards, he calls them and by impersonating an official-sounding figure such as police or bank staff, further tricks them into disclosing their PIN number.
In most cases the women do not realise the money has been siphoned from their account for days or weeks.
The man is likely to be sent back to prison next month. After his arrest, police told the Herald they were relieved that he had been caught so he could be "put away".
"He would have continued to do this and he is a real risk to the community in our opinion," a senior police source said.