GRASSLAND — The start of November marks the beginning of community safety and crime prevention month in Canada, and residents in Grassland got a head start on thinking proactively with Julie Matthews’s Oct. 24 fraud awareness and scam prevention seminar.
According to the Canada Safety Council (CSC), online crime is on the rise by way of grandparent scams, fraudulent CRA phone calls, suspect phishing links, and more.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre notes $284 million have been lost to fraud across the country from January 1 to June 30 of this year, from nearly 16,000 victims; but the entire picture of online fraud remains partly hidden behind the shame and stigma scam victims experience.
“Cybercrime is a serious issue that affects Canadians of every walk of life," said CSC president and CEO Gareth Jones. "Scams, identity theft, and other forms of digital exploitation can have devastating consequences for people. These can include financial loss, emotional distress, and damage to their personal reputation."
Grassland and area locals in attendance at Matthews’s Thursday evening presentation received a comprehensive breakdown of the online scams prevalent on today’s digital landscape and heard tips on how to identify and avoid them.
Matthews broke down many of the common tactics she’s seen in her 20-year career, whether as Global TV’s Troubleshooter or as a peace officer for the provincial Consumer Investigations Unit.
One of the most insidious types of scams for Matthews are romance scams, in which regular people are conned out of money and more under the guise of being in a long-distance relationship.
“People laugh, but I really want to talk about how scary romance scams are, because I guarantee right now, you know someone who’s either in one, who’s fallen for one, or is going to fall for one,” said Matthews. “They are, in my opinion, the worst type of scam.”
She shared a story of one Albertan who lost a life’s worth of savings, telling friends and family the cause was a gambling addiction for fear of their reaction to the truth.
Romance scammers can be found on dating sites and regular social media, will make a connection or ‘fall in love’ quickly, and will often have a tie to the local area while living in another province or country.
Fraudulent phone calls are also a widely-used method to extract cash from unsuspecting Canadians, and include calls claiming to be the CRA threatening arrest, to the recently popular grandparent scam, in which family members in distress request large sums of money.
“Other ages hear that word, and they brush it off, and they think ‘Oh, I don’t need to pay attention to that.’ This is an emergency scam where a family member is in trouble,” said Matthews. “This is one of the most profitable scams in Canada right now, it is hitting everybody.”
Emergency scammers use high-pressure tactics and look for targets to provide information like names and locations while on the phone. Matthews said they gather details on family members from online obituaries to increase the believability, making them harder to identify in the moment.
According to Matthews, there is a scam out there for everyone, including the farmers and ranchers of rural Alberta. She cautioned anyone purchasing feed, livestock, and equipment online to always be cognizant of the seller’s profile, location, and posting history.
She also advised producers to be on the lookout for fake farming grant applications, looking to gather as much information as possible.
And while cyber scams are growing, good ole fashioned face-to-face fraud is still going strong, too. Travelling pavement scams have been popular for many years across all corners of the province, but still see success due to their time-sensitive offers for a deal too good to refuse, and their proximity to real paving projects.
One attendee shared her recent encounter with a paving scam in the Grassland area on Oct. 4.
“Somebody came up to my door out of the blue, he was wearing a vest, and he was driving a truck, and he said he was with the paving company on the highway,” said the attendee, who didn’t want to share her name.
She said the pitch was high pressure; the salesman needed to know if she wanted the discounted asphalt within the hour. After trying to get in touch with her husband, she said she almost bit the bait, but a return phone call in the nick of time stopped her from saying yes.
“I had my husband on speaker phone, I was acting interested — I wanted more info from him,” she said. “His rate went from $9 a foot to $9 a square foot, which is like a $12,000 difference in price.”
She said the lack of a logo on truck and an odd business card were red flags she noticed, but gave more credence to after the encounter. A Google search showed no company by the name on the card, and the address led to a high rise in Edmonton.
“I was so upset that I almost got taken, I googled it; all this information on paving scams came up, everything was the same,” she said. “If I could go back and do it again, I’d have more fun with him.”
Albertans can hear Matthews speak about scams and fraud every week on her Scam Alert segment on 840 CFCW radio every Thursday at 10:15 a.m.
