Canadians have lost more than $1.2 million in recent weeks to scammers taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, CBC News has learned.
Jeff Thomson of the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre said the centre has received 739 reports since March 6 of attempts to defraud Canadians with scams related to the pandemic. He said 178 of those attempts succeeded.
The centre is also seeing attempts to use the pandemic as cover to infect computers with malware.
The victims of one such scheme receive messages telling them they’ve been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 and asking them to fill out what looks like an Excel form. When users click to enable the content and view the form, it infects their computers with a Trojan downloader that installs malicious files, said Thomson.
He said it’s not the first time scammers have adapted their tactics to try to cash in on an emergency.
“It’s the heightened sense of anxiety, of fear … The isolation that people are in right now is also a key factor,” Thomson told CBC News.
“Essentially, frauds are designed to get people to not think straight. So if, you know, people are already in that state … they may not be thinking straight. So it’s prime time for scammers and fraudsters to solicit for scams.”
Any direct communication Canadians receive about applying for the CERB is a scam.– Etienne Biram, CRA spokesperson
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security is also seeing attempts to scam Canadians over COVID-19.
“COVID-19 has presented cybercriminals and fraudsters with an effective lure to encourage victims to visit fake web sites, open e-mail attachments and click on text message links,” said Ryan Foreman, spokesman for the Communications Security Establishment and the Centre for Cyber Security.
“These e-mails typically impersonate health organizations and can even pretend to be from the Government of Canada. Canadians need to be aware that this type of threat is real, is happening, and that these types of COVID-19 e-mails and websites are really fraud.”
Foreman said the centre has worked with industry to take down 2,000 websites that were trying to defraud Canadians — including some that pretended to belong to government organizations like the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and the Canada Border Services Agency.
Scammers impersonating government agencies
Those government agencies are involved in one way or another with the federal government’s pandemic response; the CRA, for instance, is charged with getting Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) payments out the door. Online con artists are making that work more challenging.
“Scams purporting to be connected to the CERB may have many variations, but all appear to have the goal of duping Canadians into providing personal information under the guise of helping them claim the benefit,” said CRA spokesperson Etienne Biram.
“To be clear, the CRA is not contacting Canadians to claim CERB. Canadians must apply for the credit themselves. Simply put, any direct communication Canadians receive about applying for the CERB is a scam.”
Toronto-area resident Joanna Giannakopoulos almost fell for that scam. She received a text a few days after she was laid off from her job in a restaurant.
“I clicked the link because I thought it was a text from the government,” she said.
Phishing swindles, merchandise scams
Following the instructions in the text, Giannakopoulos filled out and submitted personal information — her full name, her social insurance number, her bank, her bank account number and password — before she suddenly realized there was something wrong with the text’s website address.
She had to scramble to notify her bank and credit agencies that her information could have been breached.
“I think that can be an easy trap, especially at a vulnerable time like right now,” she said.
Jeff Thomson is a senior RCMP intelligence analyst with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre who says scammers are taking advantage of the pandemic. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
Thomson said the phishing scam asking victims to click on a link to collect a benefit is one of the “hot scams” — but it’s not the only one the centre is seeing.
“We continue to see a variety of merchandise scams, including offers for free masks or test kits … text messages or e-mails that ask you to click on links to complete a survey which, again, will harvest your credit card, your personal information.”
Con artists are upping their game
Other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, are also getting hit with COVID-19 scams.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he has seen the form of the scams evolve over the course of the pandemic.
“Unfortunately, we have seen that some of the fraudsters have adapted their business plans in the midst of a pandemic,” Pai said. “Earlier on, they were focusing more on spam, text messages and robocalls relating to, for example, testing kits and fake cures and the like.
“Now, recently, we’ve seen an uptick in trends relating to more work-related offers. So, for example, Amazon is looking for people to work from home as an associate. Give us some of your personal information. Here’s a free subscription to Netflix for five months.”
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)
Pai said the FCC is finding that the vast majority of the scam calls are coming from overseas into the North American market.
“They’re all over the world,” he said. “It could be Philippines, India, China, Brazil. Unfortunately, this is a worldwide phenomenon.”
Pai said scammers often target small gateway telecom providers who pass the call or text on to larger providers. He said the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission issued a notice to those gateway providers regarding international robocalls and robotexts.
“We showed them the sources that we were seeing,” said Pai. “They cracked down the next day, within 24 hours. And that’s helped us combat this problem in some cases very, very quickly.”
Canadian telecom companies and the association that represents them, meanwhile, say they take the problem seriously but offered few examples of concrete action.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said it doesn’t comment on possible investigations. It said Canadians should be vigilant about scams and report them to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
