Last week, an Oak Bay resident was defrauded out of a significant amount of money through a sophisticated internet scam and phoney customer service scheme.
Oak Bay Police received a report on July 5th that a resident had clicked a link which said “millionaire that died” while surfing the web. Once the link opened, a pop-up which appeared to be Microsoft came up on their screen stating the computer had been hacked and their information had been compromised.
This pop-up provided a phone number to call which the victim of this scam called.
On the phone, they spoke with someone claiming to be a representative of CIBC’s fraud department.
This individual convinced the Oak Bay resident to withdraw a sum of $12,800 in cash and deposit that money into three separate Bitcoin ATMs. The Bitcoin was then transferred out of the account in which the resident had created.
At this point, the resident realized something was amiss and they suspected the story they had been fed by the fraudster was false.
The resident phoned their bank to inform them of what had happened and was told they had been the victim of a scam.
Oak Bay Police say this fraudster, like most, was prepared with “high pressure tactics” and had been incredibly well rehearsed in the script they had used.
Police are urging their residents to stop, take a breath and hang up the phone if they believe they are being defrauded or if something is suspicious over the phone.
They recommend phoning your bank and/or the police if there is any doubt about whether someone is telling the truth over the phone or in an email.
“Reputable and legitimate financial institutions will not ask you to make multiple cash withdrawals and then make deposits into multiple Bitcoin ATMs,” said an Oak Bay Police spokesperson.
This incident comes about a month after another Oak Bay resident lost $8,000 via e-transfer in a BC Hydro scam.
In the previous incident, the victim received a call from a man named John claiming to be a representative of BC Hydro.
The victim was told their power would be disconnected within an hour if nonexistent overdue payments were not paid.
Oak Bay Police are now investigating both cases and are urging residents to exercise caution when confronted with similar situations.
Related:
