B.C. cancer patient loses thousands in sophisticated spoofing scam

A Maple Ridge, B.C., woman says she is feeling angry and embarrassed after losing thousands of dollars to a scam while undergoing cancer treatment.

“I felt helpless because of where I was at,” Jackie Johnson told Global News.

“Especially right, sitting in a hospital getting my chemo. I couldn’t even get up and go to my bank physically to check if if my gut feeling was right of having my bank account emptied.”

Johnson said she was in the middle of a chemotherapy treatment when she received a call from a man who identified himself as Joseph from the fraud department of her bank and he told her that her card was being used in Alberta.

“So he was phoning to see whether or not I was actually in Alberta using my card or if they were fraudulent transactions that were happening,” she said.

Johnson told the man she wasn’t in Alberta and she said he even told her that as the bank they would never ask for her personal information or her bank code.

“But at the same time, you know, I know these guys know how to talk,” she said. “And we got to the point where he said, ‘You know, I have to send you the one-time code’.”

Johnson said the code came through on her phone but she still did not know if this was legitimate so she told the man she was going to hang up and call the number on the back of her bank card just to make sure.

That’s when Joseph told her to look at her phone and see that was the exact number he was calling from.

“So I think that was when I let my guard down because it was the number that I was supposed to phone to report a fraudulent phone call,” Johnson said.

2:16 Vancouver senior warning others of sophisticated credit card scam

Eventually, the man was able to convince Johnson to turn over her personal banking information and then used that to take $4,700 from her account.

“It just makes me angry,” she said. “It makes me angry.”

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Johnson said her co-workers, friends and family had just hosted a fundraiser for her and her family to help pay for some expenses while she is off work battling cancer.

‘I felt like I flushed everybody’s hard-earned money down the toilet also,” she said. “You know what I mean? Like, they just did this beautiful thing to help me and my young family, being off on disability.”

Johnson said she was told she could not get the money back because she provided Joseph with her PIN.

She said the experience felt like a real one and she tried to do everything she could in that moment to verify the authenticity of the call but she said now she knows just hang up the phone and go to the bank in person.

“I’ve learned my lesson and I hope other people learn from my mistake and just hang up the phone,” she said.

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Global News reached out to the bank and was told they had agreed to return Johnson’s money.

Sgt. Shiv Gill, in charge of the financial crime unit for the Vancouver Police Department said Johnson experienced a case of spoofing.

“Spoofing is where typically a fraudster takes a phone number that actually exists, use sophisticated internet masking techniques and pretends to be calling from that number,” he said.

“So, for example, in the context that we’re talking about, someone can pretend to be calling from the Royal Bank of Canada, any financial institution, a police department or any government agency.”

Gill said they are very hard to track as these numbers are often from Internet service providers located offshore, using tools such as VPNs and that makes it difficult for the police to track where the individual might be calling from.

He agreed with Johnson, saying if anyone receives an unsolicited call from anyone asking for money or personal information, hang up and go directly to the bank.

“These individuals that call you, they’ll be very good at the stories that they create,” he said. “They’ll sound very convincing and they’ll use other techniques that will make you disarmed and feel like you’re talking to the actual institution.

“Our lives are very busy, but what we have to do now is actually go back and then just go directly and talk to that institution.”

1:58 North Vancouver woman warns about texting scam

Johnson said she has learned not to trust anyone.

“Go to your bank physically, speak to somebody and do it immediately if they’re already in your account,” she said.

“You know, like even credit cards and stuff, right? Go to the bank. Physically deal with it. Don’t trust anyone on the phone.”

–with files from Rumina Daya