CORNWALL, Ontario – The RCMP is warning citizens about a new approach to the old CRA scam.
Originally, the scam involved citizens receiving a call from someone claiming to be from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the alleged CRA representative would then claim that the person being scammed owed the CRA a significant amount of money and that the police were on their way to arrest them unless they agreed to pay immediately.
The RCMP says that instances of this scam have declined following arrests at "call centres" in India, however, they are seeing an emergence of a new twist on this old scam.
Now, scammers are targetting previous victims. Those who have previously been victims of this scam are being called again and are being told that for a 5 percent administration fee, they can get all of their lost funds back.
Here is an example of an email that one victim received:
"We are happy to help you with our services. As you have already paid a huge amount of money to various scammers. Based on your background verification and as per your discussion with our senior management personnel Mr. David Carter, we are pleased to pay you CAD 97, 000 dollars. This is to inform you that the above amount will be given to you in four equal installments on the payment of nominal documentation fees which is 4.9% of CAD 97, 000$ which is equal to CAD 4, 753 dollar. This is a one time payment of the documentation charges which shall be collected at your door step by our representative. On receiving the said fees, we shall release your first installment cheque worth CAD 24, 250 dollars within 48 hours. If you have any queries you can reach us via email or you can call our management personnel whose details are as under. Mr David Carter".
The RCMP have said that over 2, 000 Canadians have paid $6.2 million to this scam since January 2014.