The Diabolical World of Phone Scams
March 04, 2025 at 12:27AMI’ve been contacted by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) scammers many many times, blocking each new number as it appeared on my phone. One version of the scam: You have unpaid income tax and you must withdraw cash from your bank account to pay up. Other variations are even more nefarious. According to Sarah Treleaven, these fraudsters “have contacted—by phone, email and other means—every single adult Canadian.” I knew this grift was common, but I had no idea how common. What’s more, I didn’t know that this scam was operated by professionals in India who showed up to work in call centers and took home lucrative commissions for scamming vulnerable Canadians out of their savings.
In the past few years, there has been no better example of this new economy than the CRA scam. It was perpetrated by thousands of people, mostly young men, on the other side of the planet who punched in for scheduled shifts, working on commission for far more than a straight job would pay. It also required the recruitment of dozens of small players on Canadian soil, especially new immigrants with connections to India. Some participated willingly, and others were duped into it.
And it all happened on a massive scale, right under Canadian authorities’ noses. Because even as scam artists have become savvier—scaled-up, technologically sophisticated, more ambitious and organized—Canada’s anti-fraud efforts have fallen far behind. Fraud investigations in Canada have long been under-resourced and overwhelmed. Now they’re even more hamstrung by a crushing number of small fish and the challenges of cross-border investigations. The result is that the rapidly proliferating criminal enterprises targeting Canadians operate with something close to impunity.
The idea that everyone is a potential sucker was certainly the principle underpinning the CRA scam. The fraud was so pervasive that most of the Project Octavia investigators received calls themselves. Derakhshan did multiple times—once while in the middle of a meeting about the investigation. Sometimes he played along until the call ended; on other occasions he confronted the person on the other end, only to have them scream profanities and hang up.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/03/03/the-diabolical-world-of-phone-scams/
via IFTTT
Watch