The people who monitor phone and online scams in Canada are now warning of a new text message-based operation which promises to offer its victims $300 a week if they would wrap their cars in advertising stickers.
Daniel Williams with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says the reports have been coming into their centre for the last several months — and many people hard up for cash have fallen victim to it.
"In the last few years, over a hundred people a year have been reporting to us," he says. "And it's just a tiny slice of what's actually out there. It's certainly into the many millions of dollars a year that scammers have been pulling in a year on this one version of the overall massive counterfeit cheque schemes that are going on."
In this instance, the fraudsters would send the victim a phony cheque for close to $4,000, which the victim would then deposit into their account. Once the cheque clears, the victim would be told they can keep $300 for themselves, but that they would have to send the rest back to the graphic designer responsible for the stickers.
In the end, the fraudsters would pocket close to $3,700 in real money, while the victim would be informed by the bank that the cheque was phony, and that they've have to pay the bank back in full.
Williams says fraudsters are increasingly resorting to text messages to try and reach their victims — in part, because of its popularity as a mode of communication.
"The scammers want to reach you as easily and as cheaply as possible," he says. "They want to put as little effort into reaching out to you as they possibly can. Because they know they won't approach a 90 per cent success rate; sometimes it's a very tiny fraction, but if the numbers are big enough, the profits for them are enormous."
Williams has one reminder for people looking to avoid getting taken in by these kinds of scams — if a text message, or any other kind of message, appears to be fishy, it probably is.
"Do some research before you act. If you're not sure about it, do a little bit of research," Williams says. "I guarantee it's all on the Internet. You'll be able to prove that it's a scam, in most cases, within seconds."