Sophisticated con artists had a million-dollar payday after infiltrating an email conversation between a local lawyer and his client, says the head of the Victoria Police Department’s financial-crimes division.
It’s an example of how fraud can emerge, Det. Sgt. Derek Tolmie said Wednesday, at the beginning of Fraud Prevention Month.
He said the lawyer was corresponding by email with the daughter of the overseas owners of a Victoria-area home about a sale. The lawyer is based in Victoria and the daughter in an overseas location.
It was supposed to be a simple financial transaction, Tolmie said. “Somehow, in about a six-week period while the sale goes through, fraudsters insert themselves in the email conversation to the point where they represent themselves to the sellers of the house as the lawyer and represent themselves to the lawyer as the sellers of the house.
“Next thing you know is they do such a good job of communicating, they are instructing the lawyer to send money, in fact a million dollars, to a bank account in Hong Kong.”
The lawyer sent the money to a legitimate bank account, and it disappeared.
Tolmie said police are not sure where the breach in the email conversation occurred, but part of the technique involved having addresses that were a single keystroke different from real ones.
The case was settled though insurance, he said.
Tolmie has simple advice for avoiding fraud.
“We can’t protect you. You have to take steps to protect yourself, because by the time we’re involved the money’s gone … even if we do get the suspects, the chances of getting the money back are always very slim.
“One of the things I keep saying, and it sounds like a broken record, is when it comes to the Internet, the suspects are wherever the Internet is. That, basically, rules out a couple of areas in the world like the Antarctic and parts of the polar Arctic.
“Otherwise, they can be anywhere.”
Among the worst frauds he sees are romance scams — where people lose money to those they thought loved them.
“That one’s brutal,” he said. “There’s a lot of lonely people out there who not only give away their hearts, they give away their money soon afterward.”
Nanaimo RCMP reported such a scam in January that cost a woman in her early 70s close to $100,000. She had gone online after the death of her husband to meet people, and thought she had established a relationship with a man who said he was a civil engineer in China.
She sent him money for projects he claimed to be working on, but he did not show up when they arranged to meet.
Saanich police marked the beginning of Fraud Prevention Month with a warning about a re-emerging scam that sees online companies claiming they can speed up the process of getting a passport.
Don’t fall for it, said Saanich police Acting Sgt. Jereme Leslie. Third parties can’t get passports faster, he said, and only passport offices can collect fees. Deal only with the federal government for passport matters, he said.
Leslie said the passport scam can be a means of collecting personal data that can then be used for identify theft.
“The other thing they’re doing is simply taking your money.”
He said anyone who believes they have been the victim of a scam should contact the police, as well as the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. If people have been affected by identity fraud, they should cancel their credit cards and call both the Equifax and Transunion credit bureaus to obtain a credit report, he said.
Victoria police will hold an open house on fraud prevention March 9 at 7 p.m. at police headquarters, 850 Caledonia Ave.
