March is Fraud Prevention Month and the local RCMP is sharing tips on how NOT to fall victim.
Each year, during the month of March the Alberta Community Crime Prevention Association (ACCPA), launches a campaign to educate residents on fraudulent activity directly impacting their communities.
RCMP Media Relations Officer, Corporal Troy Savinkoff says that fraud continues to be a common occurrence right across the province, and with evolving technology, it’s hard to keep up.
“With the changing technologies every year it seems that fraudsters are continuously upgrading and changing their methods to try to take our money away from us,” explains Savinkoff. “With the advent of social media platforms and computers and obviously telephones and everything else –it’s just more ways for them to access us.”
This year the RCMP and ACCPA, are highlighting cryptocurrency scams, identity theft, online scams, business fraud, mass marketing and phone scams.
Savinkoff says that far too often fraudulent cases go unreported because the victims are too embarrassed to report them. He explains that fraudsters have been known to circulate easy scams that have worked for them in the past. He points out that a phone scam involving the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has been circulating for several years now, and people are still falling for it.
“You hear all the time [about] the phone call where they’re saying that CRA has a warrant for your arrest and so forth,”…
