March is Fraud Prevention Month and the NT RCMP would like to remind people to be vigilant.
In 2019, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) received 46,465 reports from Canadian consumers and businesses. The total reported losses were $96,163,328.
It is estimated that less than 5% of fraud victims report their occurrences to the CAFC.
Fraudsters are always inventing different ways to make new victims. The Top 10 frauds affecting Canadians ranked by number of reports, from 2019, are:
- Extortion: When someone unlawfully obtains money, property or services from a person, entity or institution through coercion.
- Personal info: Identity theft occurs when a victim's personal information is stolen or compromised. This can happen as a result of volunteering personal or financial information, a phishing fraud, a stolen wallet, a database breach, etc.
- Phishing: Phishing emails are designed to trick the victim into thinking they are dealing with a reputable company. The email will direct you to click a link, with the ultimate goal to capture personal and/or financial information.
- Service: These frauds often involve offers for telecommunications, internet, finance, medical and energy services. Extended warranties, insurance and sales services may also fall under this category.
- Merchandise: Fraudsters may place advertisements on popular classified sites or social networks. They may also create websites that share the look and feel of legitimate manufacturers. Consumers may receive counterfeit products, lesser valued and unrelated goods, or nothing at all.
- Sale of merchandise: Consumers and businesses selling their merchandise online could receive fraudulent payment. In many cases, victims will receive an overpayment with instructions to forward the difference to a third party to complete the transaction.
- Job: Fraudsters use popular job listing websites to recruit potential victims. The most common fraudulent job advertisements are for: Personal Assistant or Mystery Shopper, Financial Agent or Debt Collector, and Car Wrapping. In many cases, the fraudsters will impersonate legitimate companies.
- Prize: Consumers are informed that they are the winner of a large lottery or sweepstake even though they have never purchased a ticket or entered to win. Prior to receiving any winnings, the victim will be asked to pay a number of upfront fees. No winnings are ever received.
- Bank Investigator: Fraudsters call the victims to ask for their help to catch a bank employee who has been stealing money. To help, they ask the victims to go at their bank and make a cash withdrawal from their account. The fraudsters tell the victims to not let the bank teller know what they are doing because the teller might be involved. After the withdrawal, the scammers meet the victims in a nearby parking lot, and claim the money.
- Romance: Fraudsters use every type of dating or social networking site available to contact their victims, gain their trust, affection and money.
Top tips to protect yourself:
- Create strong passwords for each of your accounts.
- Setup multi-factor authentication to make it more difficult for someone else to access your accounts.
- Update the privacy settings attached to your social network accounts.
- Be familiar with the terms of service and how payment methods work before using them. Look for a fraud protection policy.
- Never, under any circumstances, accept money and send money to a third party. You may, unknowingly, be participating in money laundering which is a criminal offence.
- Avoid reacting automatically. Take five minutes to ask additional questions and listen to your instincts. If something doesn't seem right, ask someone else about it.
- Remain current on frauds and protect others by sharing what you know.
- Do not trust the information on your call display because it can easily be manipulated.
- Do not provide your personal or financial information on demand.
- Do not open an attachment or click a link in an unsolicited email or text message.
If you think you or someone you know has been a victim of fraud, please contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501 or report online at www.antifraudcentre.ca. NT RCMP also encourage to report to your local RCMP detachment.
Learn about fraud by visiting: www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca