The Better Business Bureau Vancouver Island is bracing for a rise in loan scams, as financial pressures mount amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chief executive Rosalind Scott said it’s just a matter of time before these scams, which target people having trouble accessing cash or credit, start making the rounds.
“As it continues and people start to feel the financial pressure, you will see loan scams on the uptick, especially the advance-fee loans,” she said.
The scams target consumers via text, email, direct mail or phone and usually involve promises of guaranteed loans regardless of credit history. The only hitch? They require an advance fee.
In most cases, the broker who has contacted the consumer will pocket the fee, make little or no effort to find a loan for the consumer, then disappear.
The up-front fees are illegal in North America, and no matter what the company calls them — often they’re called processing or administration fees — they are a red flag that you are being scammed.
“You don’t get the loan and the money paid up front is lost, which is the last thing anybody needs when experiencing financial hardship,” Scott said. “I can almost promise we will see an uptick in that.”
Other scam types are also expected to be on the rise as the pandemic continues.
“Unfortunately, we often see increases in various types of scams during times of crisis,” said Const. Cam MacIntyre of the Victoria Police Department. “Scammers are opportunists and will look for any avenue to defraud someone of money.”
Scams making the rounds in the region include a phishing scam where someone receives a text claiming they have received a deposit for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and should click on a link. If they click, their personal and financial information could be compromised.
There was another scam in which the fraudsters claimed to be a Canadian bank asking consumers to open an attached document that leads to malware and fraud risk.
The police have also warned short-term-vacation-rental owners of a scam that involves a renter claiming to have had COVID-19 in order to remain in a rental free of charge.
Scott said so far, the scam situation in Greater Victoria remains fairly quiet.
“We keep waiting to get tonnes of calls from people telling us of COVID scams, but so far, we’ve only had one,” she said.
That involved a man named “Larry” going to door-to-door with a badly written pamphlet claiming he had a cure for the coronavirus that involved ultra-violet light and ozone generators.
Scott also warned consumers to be vigilant as they move to more online buying while they self-isolate.
Be on the lookout for anything that sounds too good to be true, she said — people selling things such as masks and hand sanitizer that are in short supply and anyone claiming to have a cure.
“That’s a huge red flag,” she said. “There is no cure. Listen instead to [provincial health officer] Dr. Bonnie Henry’s real advice and don’t get caught up with your own desire to have this all go away.”
Scott said while she has had a few calls about price gouging, in many cases, high prices only reflect the scarcity of a product or how difficult and expensive it might have been to source it.
