RAINY RIVER — Provincial police in the Rainy River district say an elderly resident got their life savings back after being deceived on Thursday by a seemingly emergency tech support scam.
Police received the resident’s 911 call on June 23, when they reported they believed they had lost a large sum of money, according to a media release issued by the OPP on Friday.
Officers notified OPP Northern Ontario's anti-rackets branch and a team member with the integrated fraud awareness and response initiative (IFARI), who began work to intercept the fraudulent wire transfer.
The IFARI member also activated the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and international partner agencies, including banks and foreign law enforcement partners.
As a result of the investigation, it was revealed the scam offenders posed as the computer manufacturer’s official tech support and convinced the victim their computer had been hacked, before installing software that allowed remote access.
These offenders, the police said, continued the scam by putting the victim in contact with fake law enforcement, who then provided instructions to move money to a safe account the offenders could access.
The victim then attended a local bank and wire-transferred a six-digit quantity of money, at least $100,000, into a UK bank, added the OPP.
However, the police said early intervention allowed the wire transfer to be flagged as fraud and it was intercepted before the offenders could access it.
The OPP advised residents that the people committing these crimes need victims to stay silent and in this case, the victim acted quickly and reported the fraud, resulting in a positive outcome.
With fraud continuing to evolve and affecting people across the country, the police encourages those who may have been a victim of fraud not to wait and reach out to local law enforcement, including calling the OPP at 1-888-310-1122.
