By Carolyn Grant
Even the police are not immune to attempted scams, according to Sgt. Chris Newel of the Kimberley RCMP detachment.
Last week the detachment received a call from a person claiming to be from the Canada Revenue Agency, saying they owed back taxes and could be arrested.
Newel tweeted: “So we are not immune either. CRA called the detachment this morning. We owe back taxes and could be arrested. Really?”
So we are not immune either. CRA called the detachment this morning. We owe back taxes and could be arrested. Really?
— Kimberley RCMP (@KimberleyRCMP) February 27, 2018
Within a few days the Tweet hadgone viral, with over 1,000 shares and a reach of 120,000.
The detachment had tweeted just the day before, on Feb. 27, “Don’t be scammed this tax season”, and included a video about the CRA calls.
I https://t.co/FIJFnUD5hr https://t.co/feRvTEMxet
— Kimberley RCMP (@KimberleyRCMP) February 27, 2018
The Kimberley detachment commander didn’t take the call, but the clerk who did identified it as a scam right away.
“Had it been myself, I might have engaged them a little bit more, just to taunt them a bit, ask them who’s going to get the warrant, because I have a habit of doing that,” Newel said.
“Here we are the mounted police, the police force of Canada, and they’re targeting us without any idea of who they’ve actually phoned.”
Newel was formerly a corporal with Clearwater RCMP.
A raid on a call centre in Mumbai, India in October, 2016 resulted in a noticeable reduction of CRA and IRS scam calls in Canada, the United States and elsewhere.
In the week before the raid the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre received 358 complaints about the scam. In the week following, the number dropped to 25. About 70 people were arrested.
However, by December of that year the number of scam calls was back close to where it had been earlier.
– With files from Carolyn Grant, Kimberley Bulletin.