[projekktor id=’20022′]
A warning about a gang of thieves currently trolling the 519 area code. They’re posing as agents for the Canada Revenue Agency. They can cause severe financial damage to their victims, in a very short period of time, which Candace Larouche found out.
As soon as she picked up the phone she was trapped. The person on the other end of the phone knew information they should not have known.
What followed, was a day-long odyssey of intimidation, and fear.
“And then he started talking about court fees, and going to court and, $100 000 in lawyers fees, and courts fees, and 11 years in jail.”
Candace, was in the clutches of a criminal, posing as an agent of the Canada Revenue Agency. She was told she had been audited for the years on 2004 to 2008.
” It’s all too easy to get scammed. These are professionals. They use robo-diallers, phony automated voice mail, phony websites. They’re slick. They’re sophisticated. And, they are brutally aggressive.”
They demanded that Candace pay $3700 in back taxes: immediately. They directed her to purchase pre-paid Visa cards, to transfer the money.
In a fog of fear, Candace complied, even though the warning bells, were going off in her head.
“He was threatening me. And, as I was looking at these cards my mind’s going, hey silly, -this is wrong. But, he was so convincing, and so plays on your fear, that you’re just standing outside your body, doing it.”
So Candace, and her husband John began reading off the payment numbers on the back of the 11 pre-paid Visa cards, to the phony tax agents.
“As we were telling them, they were transferring the money off, automatically. That fast? THAT FAST!”
“It’s that high pressure tactics that they’re using in order to scare people to run out, and not contact anybody, and pay the fine.”
Constable Natalie Laing says the Brantford Police Service is well aware of the on-going scam, but once you’ve transferred the money electronically, it’s almost impossible to trace.
“So you have to trust your ‘Spidey’ senses. If you suspect something is wrong, hang up and call somebody.”
“$3700 is a lot. I got three mouths to feed. I got my youngest – is one year old, and I’ve got a seven and a ten year old and that kind of cash, it hits pretty hard in the pocket, and it, I just don’t want anybody else to have to go through that kind of stuff. Because it’s not right. I mean look at me, I’m a grown man and I’m just about ready to cry because of this crap.”
Candace and John believe the information was stolen during the “heartbleed” computer hack that shut down computers at the Canada Revenue Agency for 5 days in April 2014.
The thieves seemed to know that Candace did owe money from a previous mistake on her tax return, information that seemed too confidential for a random stranger to know.
CHCH tried to ask the Canada Revenue Agency if there might be a connection to the hack last year, but they immediately and emphatically shut down the conversation, insisting that we had to speak to the RCMP, Canadian anti-fraud centre.
