Calgary being haunted by ‘virtual kidnappings’

With telephone scams, prevention better than treatment, writes Lu Xu.

There has been a striking influx of fraudulent case reports to my office by victims since January.

Among them were more than a dozen cases, including two virtual kidnappings, resulting in a total loss of $550,000. All stories are quite similar.

The fraudster, claiming to be from the Chinese Consulate General, warned victims that as a result of their personal information being compromised, they were suspects of extortion or money laundering investigations, and they could clear their names only by transferring some amount of money to a special account for financial review.

What’s even worse, in the past three weeks, the fraudster used caller ID spoofing software to convince two college students in Calgary to go into hiding and cut off contact with everyone, even parents, except for the fraudster, and then to contact their families, saying they had been kidnapped and to demand ransom money.

This was not the end of the story. In the past month, thousands of calls and complaints flooded into the Consulate General and 90 per cent of them were from local Canadians, saying they were replying to the missed calls.

The fraudster called almost everybody. Though they don’t speak English right now, they might do it in the future.

The Calgary Police Service has demonstrated a high degree of professionalism and efficiency in locating the two “kidnapped” student victims. However, these virtual kidnapping cases did nonetheless consume local resources and taxpayers’ money.

Questions should be raised. Why has the fraudster chosen Canada and Canadian Chinese as their targets? And why have so many people fallen prey to the fraud?

The fraudster runs elaborate schemes, but there is something more than that.

Obviously, a high degree of trust among Canadians has been established from childhood. People were taught to be kind, generous and honest. Most of the new Chinese immigrants have learned that and taken it to heart.

People trust government agencies such as the Canada Revenue Agency and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, as well as the consulate general, and easily fall into the trap.

Fraudsters also take advantage of most people’s mindset that they want to stay away from a criminal investigation. Overseas students, especially, have little knowledge about the local police system and are reluctant to report criminal cases. All these reasons contribute to the rampancy of phone scams.

Looking at all the cases reported, victims living in very small and closed social circles are easy to be hit. They don’t care about what has happened, or is happening around them, they seldom read newspapers, and have few friends.

Prevention is better than treatment. An effective prevention comes from a joint effort of all means. The best way to foil the fraud is to reach out to people and educate them.

Frauds without victims are like plants without soil. It is expected that reduction of scams can be achieved by eradicating their source of interest.

In addition, preventing crimes the technical way seems extremely urgent. The telephone numbers of governmental agencies need to be protected against the caller ID spoofing software.

As well, bank record tracking systems should be improved so that unreasonable transactions can be detected.

If you receive a telephone call that sounds unusual, but authoritative, please take a deep breath and stop for a couple of minutes to think, instead of making a hasty decision.

Remember: never call back at the number the caller instructed.

If necessary, try to find the right number through other channels to ask for clarification. You can immunize yourself against all kinds of frauds.