Fight fraud by telling personal stories

Fight fraud by telling personal stories



Be aware: Revenue Canada will never call you by phone or email to update personal information. If you get a call asking for those details hang up: it's fraud

Syed Ahmed was suspicious when he received a call from Officer Jeff Smith of the Canada Revenue Agency’s crime prevention branch.

The area code was 613 (which includes Ottawa), but the caller was confused about where he worked.

“I asked him what city he was calling from and he said Ontario. I said there was no city by the name of Ontario. He started arguing,” Ahmed said. “When I told him he was a fraud, he hung up the phone.”

The Canada Revenue Agency will not contact you by phone or email to update your personal information or inform you of a $521 tax refund waiting to be claimed.

Such scams have been around for years, but some people still fall for them. One variation involves telling taxpayers to expect an email money transfer (despite the CRA’s use of cheques or direct deposit exclusively).

I love stories about people coming face to face with fraud. They get your attention and warn you about hazards to your financial health.

Take Forrest Ann Lenney, who told me about the CRA scam last December. She also mentioned an 80-year-old friend, who was trying on a coat at a shopping mall.

The woman had just taken off the coat when a friendly shopper came by to say how great it looked on her. Try it on again, the shopper said, offering to hold her purse while she did so

The older woman said no, quite firmly, but was shaken by the incident, Lenney said.

Fraud can pop up when you least suspect it. The world is full of people trying to part you from your money.

Earlier this year, I spoke to a group of retired teachers. They were smart, well-informed and keen to champion the cause of teaching kids about the financial facts of life.

But one teacher told me she’d been waylaid by a scam. She received a call from a “Microsoft technician,” saying her computer was infected by a virus and had to be cleaned up before her system crashed.

“I said yes,” she told me. “I remember feeling very grateful that he’d spotted the problem and called to offer his help.”

Scammers know how to push your buttons and override your common sense. They get to you through your emotions.


So, it makes sense to talk about why people succumb to fraudulent pitches. Anecdotes are more compelling than facts and statistics.

I’m not alone in this view. I recently joined Pat Foran of CTV News, Stephanie Matteis of CBC News and Tammie Sutherland of CityNews on a media panel at Toronto Police Headquarters.

We told the attendees (who worked for non-profit, government and business organizations) that a human face and an emotional connection can help generate interest in their fraud prevention messages.

Here are some points we made:

Use great visuals. A talking head or a speaker at a podium is boring. One TV reporter wasn’t keen to hear about counterfeit drugs until he was invited to a facility to see Canada Customs agents ripping open packages of fake Viagra.

Create timely content. Messages should be reinforced all year, not just in March (Fraud Prevention Month) and November (Financial Literacy Month). Why not use Valentine’s Day as a time to talk about romance scams and refund problems when ordering flowers online?

Package data properly. Journalists love lists. Audiences love lists. Stories about the top 10 scams in Canada or the five most stolen cars are shared more widely in social media and receive more views when published online. Lists let you cover more material in a shorter time.

Fraud educators are big in social media. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre has more than 2,800 likes on its Facebook page.

There’s also a weekly fraud chat on Twitter each Thursday at 9 to 10 p.m. (#fraudchat or @fraudchatCanada). Recent topics include avoiding scams when buying concert tickets, renting summer cottages and dealing with home repair contractors.

Keeping up with media-savvy con artists isn’t easy. I’m encouraged by the fraud educators’ efforts to do their jobs more effectively.