A concerned employee saved an elderly Huron East woman, already scammed out of $2,000, from being defrauded of an additional $3,000.
Huron OPP were contacted by an employee of a local business who believed a senior was being victimized by fraudsters, police said on Monday. Officers went to the elderly woman's home where she told them she had been repeatedly called by a woman claiming to work in the Toronto head office of a well-known bank. The caller told the senior the bank was trying to catch employees who had been giving out clients' personal information.
The senior was told the bank would transfer $3,000 into her bank account, which she was to use to buy prepaid Visa cards in a bid to track and catch the offending bank employees. The caller then requested the senior's full name, date of birth, and bank account information, which she provided.
The elderly woman was then instructed to take a taxi to Goderich to buy two prepaid credit cards in the amount of $1,000 each. The caller then asked the woman for the credit card numbers and the codes off the back of the recently purchased cards.
While police were speaking with the senior, the scammer called again. This time, she was put on speaker where officers listened as she told the senior to go to a grocery store in Grand Bend and another in Goderich and not to tell the cab driver what she was doing, other than buying groceries. The caller told the senior multiple times not to disclose what she was doing to anyone and that if the cashier asked if this was a scam she was to reply that the cards were for her grandchildren.
Police escorted the woman to her bank where she found out the scammer had created an online bank account to transfer money from her line of credit into her chequing account. This was done to make it appear as though the bank had deposited $3,000 into her account, police said.
While the elderly woman did lose $2,000 in the bank scam, she would have lost thousands more had a concerned employee not called OPP to intervene, police said
Police are using the incident as a reminder to the public that scammers are still quite active and use various techniques to steal residents' hard-earned money. Last year, $530 million was lost to scams, a nearly 40 per cent increase over 2021, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
To help protect against fraud, police recommend never giving out personal information such as name, address, date of birth, or banking information. They also advise never to accept friend requests from people you don't know or reply to texts from phone numbers you don't recognize.
Anyone who believes they are the victim of a scam is encouraged to report it to police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501.
