Scammers posing as tax agents target Canadian cryptocurrency holders

More than one hundred U.S. dollars were lost due to a social engineering scam: supposed Canada Revenue Agency employees who managed to persuade victims into giving their funds away were, of course, imposters. Funds were sent through Bitcoin ATMs which exist in Canada, and officials believe than funds still can be tracked.

As the victims tell, fraudsters were very convincing, acting in a typical manner of regional police. They even managed to get the phone of the victims to show their telephone number as “York Regional Police”, which is, apparently, tech-savvy criminals can do now.

Canadian police has some statistics that tell about the increase of scams similar to this one, and in order to avoid more crimes like this, the financial awareness of common people should be raised. They have already placed notifications on Bitcoin ATMs which tell that no Canadian authority accepts bitcoins as payment, which might help.

“Fake cop” tactic is used globally, as recently, there were news about a man in Russia who was posing as a member of the local police authority to steal a mobile phone, as he claimed, “to check if it’s not the one that was recently stolen”. Best tactics is always call the actual police and check back with them what is going on.