One of my recent stories was about a Burnaby senior who partially fell for a scam in which someone posed as a Canada Revenue Agency employee.
You can read it all here, but let me admit right now that when this local senior shared her story with me, I found myself nodding my head a little too hard.
That’s because I had pretty much fallen for the same scam a few year before.
I was at a low point. I hadn’t started working yet for the NOW and freelance work was really up and down – meaning that my income would be amazing one month and absolutely zero the next.
Doing your taxes when you strictly freelance is an adventure because you have to pay your taxes as you go and submit all sorts of invoices to back up your income claims and deductions.
I was mired in confusion as I was preparing all of my forms when I received a phone call in which the number was spoofed to look like the CRA.
As I remember, the caller told me there was an issue involving my GST number – when you freelance, you have to charge GST and have one of these numbers.
Like an idiot, I felt panicked and wanted to get things sorted out and so I exchanged a bunch of information with the person – information that I shouldn’t have been giving out over the phone to a stranger.
The person said they would be calling back with more verification information and after I hung up the phone the reality of what I had just done sank in like I was listening to the spoon on the tea cup in Get Out.
I contacted CRA myself and discovered that there was no problem with my GST number and nobody from the agency had contacted me.
Fantastic.
For months afterwards, I worked to change a lot of my information, including working with a identify theft specialist to prevent someone from posing as me.
I couldn’t stop worrying about it or punishing myself for being so gullible.
The whole experience left some scars.
The RCMP offers some background on this kind of scam.
A scammer claims to be an employee of either the Canada Revenue Agency or Service Canada. They state that you:
- have a compromised SIN number
- have an outstanding case against you
- owe back taxes
- have unpaid balances
- committed a financial crime
They say that if you do not speak to them immediately, you'll be arrested, fined or even deported. This wasn’t my case, but so many others have had this happen to them.
The scammers may request payment via money service businesses, pre‐paid cards/gift cards (iTunes, Google Play or Steam cards) or Bitcoin.
Please don’t be like me. Be vigilant. Be prepared.
You’ll sleep better at night.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
