Another B.C. senior hit by bank scam, says she’s out thousands of dollars

A former Surrey resident says she was scammed out of thousands of dollars after a fraudster pretended to be a representative from her bank.

Marlene says the caller tricked her into buying pre-paid credit cards and bitcoin after they told her that fraudulent activity was spotted in her CIBC account.

“I was skeptical of it. And I said to him not once, but maybe three times. I said, ‘how do I know that you’re not the scammer?’ he said, ‘would I be helping you with this? Would I have this kind of knowledge?'”

The scammers told Marlene that if she handed over the gift card numbers, it would bait the apparent “fraudster” by tracking them to a location.

In January, CityNews reported a similar story involving Diane, who says she was also manipulated by fraudsters pretending to be from her bank.

Related Articles:

• A senior says she’s out $80,000 after being tricked by fraudsters

• Vancouver police, volunteers warn seniors about rising “grand parent scam”

• Victims lose thousands in cryptocurrency scams: Coquitlam RCMP

Following that report, Marlene reached out to tell her story of being scammed. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says these types of crimes have increased in the last year. In 2021, Canadians were scammed out of $4.6 million. In 2022, it went up to $6.7 million.

Jeff Horncastle from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says bitcoins and cryptocurrency are “practically untraceable.”

The chances of getting the money back are slim. That’s why the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre focuses on fraud prevention and education as the number one tool to try to to prevent this,” Horncastle said.

In a statement, CIBC says it never asks clients to buy gift cards or cryptocurrencies or to help with a fraud investigation.

“We have processes and controls in place to help prevent unauthorized transactions and our team is trained to ask questions when transactions do not fit a client’s usual banking pattern,” the statement reads.

CIBC says it’s best to hang up when getting a suspicious call and contact your bank using the official phone number found on the back of your bank card.

Marlene says her bank was able to trace the money to Hanoi in Vietnam but she would like her bank to further investigate.

“I really think they’ve got a big gap and they need to fix it because a lot of people are getting hurt,” Marlene said, “we can’t afford to be taken for money like this, because we don’t have enough to begin with.”