Canada has a population of about 40 million people. A story in Maclean's about the spread of phone scams contains the remarkable nugget that one particular scam operation managed to contact each and every adult in the country by phone, email, or in some other fashion. It was known as the CRA scam, referring to the Canada Revenue Agency. The idea was simple enough: The scammers informed people they owed taxes and got them to send money, sometimes through the mail, sometimes through electronic means or with bitcoin. Most would-be victims recognized it as a ruse, but tens of thousands did not, many of them elderly. Authorities figure victims lost a collective $34 million, at least.
The story by Sarah Treleaven details how Canadian authorities, somewhat belatedly, launched Project Octavia to go after the extensive operation operated out of call centers in India and facilitated by "mules" collecting money in Canada. One of the more jarring elements is how thoroughly victims appeared to be brainwashed, so much so that authorities think the scammers worked with psychologists. "It's a form of hypnosis," says the lead investigator. Sometimes, owners of stores with bitcoin machines would attempt to stop victims from depositing large amounts of money, only to be met with fierce resistance.
The good news is that Project Octavia had some measure of success, resulting in the arrests of mules and money managers in Canada and the shutdown of dozens of call centers in India (in cooperation with Indian authorities). The bad news is that Octavia is now shuttered, and scammers are only growing more sophisticated. Read the full story. (In the US, lots of people are getting bogus texts about overdue road tolls.)
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uBlock 
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Ghostery 
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