Scams increasing as Calgary economy takes a downturn | Calgary Herald
Leah Brownridge, spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau serving southern Alberta and East Kootenays, said the organization definitely sees an increase in scams especially during an economic downturn like the one Calgary is currently experiencing.
“Scammers really try to prey on people’s emotions, trust and their generosity and all of those things are at their highest when you’re facing a hard time or an economic downturn, especially job-wise,’ said Brownridge. “So in this current situation we are seeing more scams pop up unfortunately and those would be work-from-home scams, employment scams.”
Brownridge said the BBB is aware of the restaurant scam as described by Kanai.
On Monday, Calgary-based WestJet Airlines announced it had uncovered a scam involving a deeply discounted airfare offer for registrants of an upcoming conference in the U.S.
While regularly monitoring WestJet’s credit card transactions, the company discovered a spike in the number using a Discover credit card — an American card. Further investigation found that the credit cards had been stolen to purchase airfare on WestJet.
There was also an individual who advertised on a personal Facebook page a way to get deeply discounted airfare, on return flights for up to 50 per cent off, between Toronto and Las Vegas for an upcoming global training conference in Las Vegas next month. The conference is legitimate, said Robert Palmer, spokesperson for WestJet.
As many as 100 conference registrants accepted the offer and paid for airfare only to discover that their ticket was not valid because it had been purchased with other stolen credit cards, he said.
“We handed the whole mess over to the Toronto police service last week for further investigation to determine criminal charges,” said Palmer.
WestJet continues to deal with a phone scam, which has been around for about five years, where people are contacted about winning a certain number of WestJet dollars and if they are interested in redeeming the dollars or finding out how they can receive them they are re-directed to a “quasi-legitimate vacation company,” said Palmer.
“We’ve identified five of them that use this same telemarketing firm and they are in Cancun as far as we can tell.”
Recently, the BBB warned people to “exercise extreme caution” when responding to unsolicited emails, text messages and high-paying job offers.
The BBB had about 10 consumer inquiries in the past two weeks about a mystery shopper scam.
The scam starts with an unsolicited offer to become a mystery shopper or secret shopper. If a person indicates interest in it, they receive a cheque in the mail with instructions for their assignment. They are asked to deposit or cash the cheque and keep a portion of the funds as payment for the job. The remaining funds are to be used to send a wire money transfer to test the company’s procedure and customer service skills. The cheque eventually bounces and the person is held accountable to pay for the funds that were wired.
Just last week, Service Alberta warned people to beware of phoney websites “preying on desperate” job seekers.
“Fraudulent websites posing as legitimate Alberta employers are appearing on the Internet, offering positions in Alberta’s oilpatch — jobs that do not exist,” said the government department on its website.
“A downturn in oil prices means greater competition for work in Alberta and scammers are targeting job seekers in Canada and beyond.”
It cited, as an example, a website for a fictitious business called Daglo Oil & Gas Co. — dagloagency.com — which has been offering employment for a fee paid in advance.
“The fee demand is usually under the guise of work visas, travel expenses or other pre-screening,” said the government.
“After the money is paid, the job seeker finds out there is no real company and no real job. In fact, there is little more than a flashy website, much of which has been copied from a legitimate Alberta oil and gas firm.”
The website lists a corporate office in Calgary and has pictures of an executive team which turns out to be from Calgary-based Connacher Oil and Gas Ltd.
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