The Canada Revenue Agency does not need, want or accept gift cards.
That’s the message police are trying to impress upon the public after receiving myriad reports of CRA scams that frequently include a demand for iTunes gift cards.
The effectiveness of the scam was recently demonstrated when a customer at a North Vancouver store tried to buy thousands of dollars of iTunes cards. When the clerk queried the unusual request, the customer explained they needed to settle a tax debt. While police questioned the scam’s target, another customer tried to buy several thousand dollars of iTunes cards for the same reason, according to a release from North Vancouver RCMP spokesman Cpl. Richard De Jong.
“You can’t imagine how big it is,” De Jong said of the scam’s prevalence and apparent success. “There’s far too many victims.”
Typically, residents receive a threatening email or a phone call from someone purporting to represent the CRA and demanding payment under penalty of criminal charges, jail sentences or deportation. If questioned, the scammers tend to affect an authoritative tone while explaining the working relationship between the Apple corporation and the federal government.
“They just lie through their teeth, of course,” De Jong said.
The fraudsters often take advantage of new immigrants and Canadians with a limited grasp of English, but the scam runs “across the board,” De Jong noted.
Targets of the scam are also sometimes swayed when they see CRA or sometimes even RCMP pop up on their call display, which can be bypassed by an app that’s popular among swindlers, De Jong explained.
In certain cases, victims are asked to read the serial numbers of gift cards over the phone. By the time they realize they’ve been duped the con artists have converted the cards into online credits.
Police are hoping to get support from retail store clerks. If they notice a customer buying a quantity of iTunes cards that would be unusual for a music lover, they should inquire what the cards are for, De Jong said. “If they say, ‘I need to pay my taxes,’ well, then some alarms should go off and the manager should be called and the police should be called.”
More information is available at the CRA’s website at cra-arc.gc.ca and at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
