Members of the Weyburn Police Service canvassed retailers last week, hoping to reach those selling gift cards. They left educational materials for staff about a current international iTunes gift card scam, and they encouraged the retailers to put up posters in their stores cautioning people about their motives for purchasing large amounts of iTunes cards.

Some victims of the scam have purchased several hundred, even several thousand, dollars worth of iTunes cards with the intention of paying what they believed to be their debt to the Canada Revenue Agency.

“We have now identified a couple of people who have suffered significant loss because of the scam,” said Deputy Police Chief Rod Stafford. “With a lot of the others, fortunately, it appears that people are being smart enough before they go down the road too far and lose any money.”

He noted that fear is likely the main reason people fall for the scam, due to urgent demands for payment from what they believe is the “tax man” and due to fear of threatened jail time.

“They play on peoples’ fears,” said Stafford, adding that the fear can potentially be compounded by the person maybe not having been honest on their taxes or being late on payments.

“These scammers in their own right are very professional and they’re very good at what they do and that’s why they’re so successful.”

The best ways to prevent victimization include verifying phone numbers and reporting suspicious calls.

Stafford said the C.R.A. must follow proper protocols, such as using Canada Post for important correspondence, that incoming phone numbers should be verifiable online or from the phone book. When they call, ask for a number to call them back and verify it before continuing the conversation.

For those who are convinced they can appease the C.R.A. with iTunes cards, businesses are being asked to report or prevent the sales of excessive card purchases.

A couple of local businesses have already changed store policies, restricting the amount of iTunes cards in a purchase.

“Aside from maybe graduation time and Christmas, the typical iTunes purchase is in the couple of hundred dollar range,” said Stafford. “[Retailers] occasionally see two thousand, twenty-six hundred dollars was one case. None of those were reported to us, so we’re fearful that there’s many more victims being affected by this type of scam than are reporting to the police when they find out they have in fact been a victim.”

“Some don’t feel there’s any value in coming to the police because they realize there’s little to no chance to catching these groups, because, for the most part, they operate off-shore and online, which is virtually impossible to trace.”

Reporting all scam experiences to the police is still important to prevent future victims.

“It’s important in terms of determining the scope, both locally, provincially and nationally,” explained Stafford. “The last federal budget had significant dollars associated to it for some new Cyber-crime programs, aimed specifically at these types of things, that will assist in the investigation of them. It will establish a national clearing-house for the information that might actually enable the police on an international level to do something.”
“Whether we get money back for a victim is highly unlikely, but identifying the people, identifying the groups in off-shore countries, and with the assistance of the international policing community, shutting those groups down.”

“That’s been effective in a couple of very high profile cases in the past couple years, and we’re hoping with the new Cyber-crimes Centre that will be up and running fully next year, that Canada will be able to contribute to that.”

“But of course it all starts with the police being made aware of what’s going on in the community. So we can feed that machine at a national level and then at an international level and try and make some difference.”