A phone scam that has plagued taxpayers for several years may finally be on the decline after a major crackdown in Mumbai, India.
In early October, a call centre in Mumbai was busted, leading to a dramatic drop in the number of Canadians reporting harassing scam calls from the Canada Revenue Agency, according to the Better Business Bureau. Mumbai police arrested more than 70 people and are questioning hundreds more who were part of a call centre targeting North Americans.
The scam has hit many people in the Tri-Cities, including a Coquitlam man who began receiving the calls in January and eventually lost $8,000 to the fraudsters, who had several of his personal details and threatened his arrest if he didn't immediately correct the "mistake" he'd made on his income taxes.
In the spring, a Coquitlam woman reported getting calls from an "Officer Ryan Smith," who aggressively demanded she call him back to discuss her apparent tax fraud.
The reports continued to grow, prompting the BBB to warn Canadians about the scam that was accounting for 20% of all the frauds reported to its Scam Tracker web page.
"This scam has affected just about everyone at one time or another," said Evan Kelly of the BBB serving mainland B.C., in a release. "Fortunately, this scam wasn’t the leader in terms of loss but almost everyone I’ve talked to says they received those dreaded and threatening calls, sometimes in the middle of the night."
From Oct. 3 to 9, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre recorded 358 CRA scam complaints, but in the week following the Mumbai bust, the number of complaints dropped to just 25.
Kelly said the number of reports on the BBB's Scam Tracker have also slowed, noting the complaints about a similar IRS scam in the U.S. have also dropped significantly.
The CRA scam has taken two basic forms. In one, a CRA "agent" claims a potential victim owes back taxes and pressures him or her into paying by prepaid credit care or wire transfer, and threatens arrest for non-compliance.
In the other version, scammers claim they are issuing tax refunds and will ask you for personal information under the guise of transferring a refund. The information can then be used for identity theft.
The scammers often went to great lengths to appear credible, supplying a fake badge number and making their phone number appear in caller ID as coming from CRA headquarters in Ottawa or from the RCMP.
The BBB offered the following tips to help spot the scam:
• You are pressured to act immediately as scammers typically try to push you into action before you have had time to think. The CRA will give you the chance to ask questions or appeal what you owe, and its first contact with you will always be by mail, not phone or email.
• Payment must be made by wire transfer, prepaid debit card or other non-traditional payment methods. These methods are largely untraceable and non-reversible. The CRA will never demand these forms of payment.
• The CRA does not use “robocalls.” If you get one, just ignore it.
• The CRA will never solicit personal information over the phone or online.
@spayneTC
