It has come to the attention of the Owen Sound Police Service that local residents are again being inundated with fraudulent schemes designed specifically to steal their money. Persons are contacted either by phone or in some cases by e-mail. It is important that each and every resident remains vigilant and able to recognize the difference between a legitimate call or e-mail contact and ones that are fraudulent.
Potential victims have been called by persons pretending to be from Revenue Canada. The caller will attempt to get the unsuspecting victim to confirm their personal banking information.
Potential victims have also been contacted by persons pretending to be employees of Canadian banking institutions. The fraudster will tell the unsuspecting victim that there has been suspicious activity on their Credit Card and ask that they confirm their card number.
In both of the above examples you can recognize the fraud simply by what is being asked. Revenue Canada and Banking Institutions would never request your personal banking or credit card information over the phone when they initiated the call. In the event that a legitimate call is received from a credit card company seeking to confirm the legitimacy of a transaction, the company would never ask for your credit card number as they already have it.
In another recent incident, a person responded to a job add and as a result was sent a cheques in excess of $4000.00. E-mail contact was made and instructions given on what to do with the money. In cases like this you are always asked to deposit the cheque into your bank account. Once the bank clears the funds you are then asked to send most of the money to someone using Western Union. This is often done under the guise of “secret shopper†as you will be asked to rate the customer service you received. You will be allowed to keep a small portion of the original cheque. The bank will eventually learn that the cheque was fraudulent and your account will be debited for the amount that the bank lost.
In this case, and in other similar instances, you can recognize the fraud from what you were sent, a large cheque. No valid company would send stranger thousands of dollars in this manner. If the cheque was legitament what would stop someone from cashing it and keeping the money?
A number of local residents have been receiving phone calls from persons stating they are from Microsoft Security. These callers typically have strong accents and are calling from what sounds like a large noisy call centre. The caller will attempt to get the unsuspecting victim to sign onto their computer and complete certain key strokes. Should the victim do what is asked the caller will be able to gain access to the victim’s computer and hijack valuable information from it.
As a rule, Microsoft would never ask you to complete key strokes on your computer. At most you may be asked to change your passwords because of suspicious activity. The password change would be done without the aid of Microsoft.
In most cases you can avoid being taken advantage of simply by asking the obvious questions. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. At the very least, it should dictate that the interaction should be closely scrutinized.
Should you be unsure of who you are talking to hang up and call the company yourself in order to verify the information and satisfy yourself that the interaction is legitimate.