{"id":49876,"date":"2015-05-19T19:42:33","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T11:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=49876"},"modified":"2015-05-19T19:44:29","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T11:44:29","slug":"canada-police-phone-scams-rampant-target-clueless-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/05\/19\/canada-police-phone-scams-rampant-target-clueless-immigrants\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada Police: Phone scams rampant, target \u2018clueless\u2019 immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ace Reality broker Laxmi Mital, who is an Indian immigrant to Canada for 44 years, claimed that a representative of the \u2018Consulate General of India\u2019 and the \u2018Canadian Immigration Service\u2019 had been calling him for complaints filed against him and ordered him to pay a $1,000 fine.<\/p>\n

Mital said that the incident did not just happen once. He had received multiple calls. The first call took place on May 1, when the man on the line told him that he was from the \u2018Consulate General of India\u2019 and that \u2018there are some complaints against you.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said I have nothing to do with the Consulate General of India. I said who are you and he hung up the phone,\u201d Mital recalled.<\/p>\n

The Consulate General of India, for their part, asserted that no one from them made the said phone call.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely do not call anybody to pay money because there are complaints against him. Nor do we believe Canadian authorities call in that manner,\u201d an Indian Consulate General representative said.<\/p>\n

The second call occurred on May 4. This time, the man claimed to be a certain Jack Taylor from the \u2018Canadian Immigration Office.\u2019 He reiterated the said \u2018complaints\u2019 and the amount of money Mital had to pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked him what was the complaint and he would not say what was the complaint. I said \u2018How did you calculate $1,000? Why not more?,\u2019\u201d he asked, demanding for more information on the \u2018complaints.\u2019<\/p>\n

The bogus caller, who had a Texas area code, had been contacted but did not clearly answer questions on his calls or his purpose. He only disclosed that he was Jack Taylor from the \u2018Canadian Immigration Service\u2019 who called immigrants for \u2018complaints.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mital then believed that the caller was a fraudster, only pretending as a representative of the Indian government to steal money from him.<\/p>\n

The Calgary Police Service\u2019s Economic Crimes Unit, meanwhile, confirmed that Mital\u2019s caller was a scammer and said that the incident was not new.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are different variations saying they\u2019re Indian immigration, Canadian immigration\u2026 lots in relation to immigration in general. They do prey on people, new immigrants to Canada, things like that that don\u2019t understand the laws or how immigration works and are fearful that they\u2019ll be deported,\u201d Staff Sgt. Kristie Verheul said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a spike. It\u2019s definitely something that happens consistently over the phone. But what we are seeing rise is the cyber side of things so emails and websites that have links on them or an email saying this is Canada Immigration and we need to do X and Y, follow these steps,\u201d she added, mentioning that 14 similar incidents had been reported to them as of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ace Reality broker Laxmi Mital, who is an Indian immigrant to Canada for 44 years, claimed that a representative of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":49881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-immigration","mauthors-jane-moraleda","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}