The Scammers Almost Got Me
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Money, Crime, Scam, Phone Scam, Fraud

You hear about people getting scammed all the time; see people getting taken advantage of, losing their shirts and their life-savings. But you think, that will never happen to me. I’m on to those scammers, I’m smarter than them. Until it does happen to you; because as smart as you are, when it happens, logic seems to vanish.

This happened to me today. I’m not a stupid person. I know about scammers, and I’ve had friends get affected by various types of them. But when that call comes to you and everything about it seems legitimate, what should be common-sense, suddenly isn’t so cut and dry.

I don’t typically answer any calls from numbers I don’t know. I screen all my calls, all the time. But when I received four calls from the same local number within about four hours, I started thinking maybe it was something important. So with my fine detective skills (aka Google), I punched in the number and found it was the number of a courthouse in a neighboring town. I don’t know about you, but if the courthouse is calling me repeatedly, I’m going to answer that call; something could be wrong!

These people are smart (unfortunately), but they still make mistakes (fortunately).

The Call

The fifth time they called, after Googling the number, I answered. I was greeted by an automated message telling me that there had been some criminal activity linked to my social insurance number; press ‘1’ to speak with an agent now and get the details of your case.

I pressed ‘1’.

The first missed red-flag

A man with a thick accent comes on the phone and asks how he can help me. In hindsight, that should have been my first clue. You’re calling me, and ask me how you can help?

Him: Thank you for calling (insert courthouse name), how can I help you?

Me: I’m not calling you, you’re calling me.

Him: Yes, how can I help you?

Me: I don’t know, you’ve been calling me all morning, what is this about?

The second missed red-flag

I should have ended the conversation when he asked me to confirm the last three digits of my social insurance number (which he gave me) and asked me to spell my first and last name…twice. But at this point, the most important thing going through my mind is wanting to find out what criminal activity has been linked to my identity.

He tells me.

A car — a KIA Soul — purchased with my ID has been found in Nunavut, at a home where many pounds of cocaine and thousands of dollars were seized, but unfortunately the perpetrators were nowhere to be found. I’m sorry, what?

These people are very convincing. They pray to the fact that they’ve just dropped a bombshell on you, and you’re now feeling confused and slightly panicked.

They tell you how they’re on your side, and want you to help them clear your name. They ask you, ‘do you want to cooperate and help clear your name of these criminal charges?’ and tell you that the call is being recorded and will be used during court proceedings and that everything you say will either work for or against you.

The third missed red-flag

You can’t speak with any other person about this until your name has been cleared, because it could incriminate them. No, not even your spouse. This is where I began to feel my intuition kick in, and I voiced as much. But they kept reminding me that I was speaking with the courthouse. He asked me if I had Googled the number, and told me again that the call was being recorded. He assured me that I would receive a transcript and recording of it after the court proceedings.

Throughout an hour-long conversation, numerous red flags are now popping up, over and over again. But somehow, he continues to keep me on the line — looking back now, I feel beyond stupid. But in the moment, logic escaped me.

I went as far as driving to the bank and withdrawing all of my money. My good senses finally kicked in at this point. When he directed me to a local convenience store and explained how he would ‘guide’ me as to how to deposit my money in a temporary ‘wallet’ account while they processed my information. Luckily, I finally listened to my gut while I was still sitting in my car. I’d received a text (how professional) with an official-looking letter from the government of Canada, describing what was happening and how I was going to clear my name. This letter was their mistake.

(screenshot of the actual letter)

BitCoin. Ha. Now I was pissed!!!

He was caught, but I decided to play along now and see where he would take this. I voiced my discomfort at doing all of this over the phone and told him that I’d much rather just drive down to the courthouse or the police station and do things in person. As I suspected, he didn’t want me to do that — and once again tried to intimidate me by saying that if I chose to go that route, he would be forced to freeze all of my accounts immediately and contact the police station so that when I arrived, they would proceed to place me under arrest.

He would speak over me to the point where I had to raise my voice to be heard. When I started shouting at him, he had the nerve to ask me “Do you know who you’re speaking with?!” — to which my answer was “No, that’s the problem, I DON’T know who I’m speaking with.” I promptly hung up and drove directly to the police station.

Shaken up, I asked the police clerk to read the letter, and she didn’t even get through the first part before confirming it was a scam. She confirmed that they re-route phone numbers through local numbers to make us believe it’s legitimate (they’ve even used that exact police station’s phone number!)

I then proceeded to go back to the bank, and put my money back into my account. The teller was glad to see me back there; she admitted to me that she had almost asked me if something was wrong when I was withdrawing the money because I seemed “off”, and that she’d then screenshotted my phone number and was going to call me after her shift. I told her that if anyone else goes in acting the way I was, for her to please, PLEASE speak up and ask them.

I told them the whole story, and even other patrons were listening to my tale. They assured me that my accounts were safe, and I was able to finally end that horrible experience.

I’m not proud of how I was taken for a complete fool — and I do feel the fool. I almost allowed these criminals to get the best of me, and all of the money in my bank account.

One of the things he told me kind of makes me chuckle now — he told me that once I deposited the money into that bank machine, I would feel PROUD of myself, for having done the right thing and helping them to ‘catch the suspects’ and stop them from doing this to other unsuspecting people.

It’s kind of ironic now…I do feel proud of myself, for having done the right thing. I may not have stopped their operation, but for the hour that they were on the phone with me, that’s one less person they were able to victimize today.