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Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse

Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse.

How Canadians can protect themselves from payment fraud

Fraud is an endemic problem for Canadian businesses and consumers alike. Criminals are using every trick at their disposal to siphon cash from Canadian consumers and businesses alike. What kinds of payments fraud do criminals carry out, and how can we prevent it?

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, a joint venture between the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and the Competition Bureau registered more than 10,000 mass marketing fraud complaints in the first half of 2017. They cost Canadians more than $38 million. ID theft cost another $5.5 million and affected more than 16,000 Canadians, CAFC said. The Centre estimates that these statistics, reported to it directly by Canadians, represent only around five per cent of actual fraud losses.

Read more at financialpost.com

Five companies charged in telephone scam that targeted Canadians, Americans

They bought Internet phone devices in bulk, used thousands of prepaid debit cards to launder money from North America to India and left behind elderly victims who were bullied into forking over thousands of dollars.

U.S. authorities announced on Thursday that they had charged 56 people and five companies operating call centres in India in a case that offers a peek into a widespread telephone scam that has swindled millions of dollars from people in Canada and the United States.

While the allegations unveiled on Thursday do not mention Canada, the indictment says the victims were “in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

An RCMP spokeswoman said the force believes there might be a Canadian connection.

“Victims have reported that at times a caller would identify themselves as [an Internal Revenue Service] agent to the victim, and then change tactics when he/she realized that in Canada there is no IRS,” Sergeant Penny Hermann told The Globe and Mail on Thursday in response to a question.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/five-companies-charged-in-international-telephone-scam/article32562168/