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By Veronica Beltran

RCMP say education to prevent fraud

March is Fraud Prevention Month, protect yourself against scammers

Mar 11, 2020 | 10:39 AM

PRINCE GEORGE–Fraud Prevention month is this month and the Prince George RCMP are reminding the public that the only way to stay safe from fraud to be educated on the subject.

We are only 11 days into the month of March but so far in 2020, the Prince George Police Detachment has received more than 170 fraud-related reports with 44 of them being reported from March 1st through 9th.

This time last year the Detachment had received 151 fraud reports with 27 of them in the first nine days of March. A release by the PG RCMP says that there are at least two possible reasons for the increase: fraudsters are getting more creative and increasing their success despite public awareness, or more people have become aware of fraud scams and are reporting more incidents.

The most common frauds reported in 2019 were extortion type frauds including the taxpayer scam, where victims are coerced to pay back taxes under the threat of being arrested. There are variations of the tax scam which involve immigration, ransomware and sextortion.

Tips on avoiding tax scams:

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• Do not take immediate action. The government has processes in place to acquire owed money, none of which are immediate;
• Know who you are dealing with. Obtain their contact information and search it on the internet. Often the contact info will be associated to frauds and not the CRA. This is a clear warning that this is not legitimate;
• Hang-up and call the Canada Revenue Service’s (or other government agency) toll-free phone number in the Blue Pages of the phone book or from their website,
• Never give your personal information to anyone that calls you over the phone. This is especially the case when an organization such as the Canada Revenue Agency calls and should have all your necessary information already;
• Never agree to wire back funds to the government.

Frauds involving personal information were the second-highest reported type of fraud last year. In this, scammers contact victims by email or phone pretending to be a business, bank, utility company, government agency or other organization urgently requesting personal information. Once the victim provides the scammer with the information, the scammer can steal the victim’s identity and acquire credit cards and loans in the victim’s name.