Scam Targeting (Recent?) Immigrants?

GrumpyCanadian

I noticed a strange number in the call logs a few times lately, but never bothered to answer when I was around, and the caller never seemed to leave a message. More recently, a call with the same claimed number came through, and a message was left. It was something like:

Hello! Immigration office. We have tried to contact you repeatedly, but you have failed to respond. To <do something>, press 9 now. [brief pause] [message repeats]

To me, there were a number of things that revealed that this was a scam call. I won’t detail all of them, so as not to offer any suggestions for improvement, but the notable ones: they didn’t identify themselves as anything more than “immigration office”; no details, no actual department name or even country, etc. They didn’t mention the name of the person they were trying to reach. There was an effort to make it sound intimidating and urgent.

It wouldn’t surprise me if such a message were to be taken seriously by some recent arrivals. I also suspect that pressing 9 would have connected the recipient of that call with someone who said some payment was urgently required in order for their file not to be rejected, resulting in imminent deportation or something of the sort.

In my situation, there is no living family member who has any business with any “immigration office”, so they’ll have to try harder if they want there to be any response. Sorry, twits, no dice!

Anyone else ever get one of these?

urbanriot

GrumpyCanadian

Anyone else ever get one of these?

No, instead I’m getting weird calls from Indian telemarketers trying to get information from me like my address. “We have a package for you that didn’t make it to your home, can we confirm your address?” and when I ask what address they tried to send it to, they tell me “your address” and I ask “what address do you have on file?” and they hang up.

px_eliezer_

GrumpyCanadian Hello! Immigration office. We have tried to contact you repeatedly, but you have failed to respond.

The exact same fake language could be used to target people in the USA—and probably has.

The crooks are thus being very efficient.

GrumpyCanadian

px_eliezer_ I have no way to know that it was even specifically aimed at Canadian residents, or that they were even aware that the area code being called is Canadian. After all, both countries are +1, then maybe some randomly generated area code that happened to work; maybe it was targeted, but I will never know.

However, especially given the recent official actions in your country, I imagine that receiving such a call could be especially terrifying.

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urbanriot

urbanriot No, instead I’m getting weird calls from Indian telemarketers trying to get information from me like my address. “We have a package for you that didn’t make it to your home, can we confirm your address?” and when I ask what address they tried to send it to, they tell me “your address” and I ask “what address do you have on file?” and they hang up.

Same game I sometimes play with the CRA scammers. They always want info and claim to be the government, and why would the government not have all my info on file. Sometimes i play with them more and give them like celebrity names or serial killers, they don’t even realize it.

mrweather

I especially like the scam where my own number calls me!

g121

[deleted] urbanriot No, instead I’m getting weird calls from Indian telemarketers trying to get information from me like my address. “We have a package for you that didn’t make it to your home, can we confirm your address?” and when I ask what address they tried to send it to, they tell me “your address” and I ask “what address do you have on file?” and they hang up.

Same game I sometimes play with the CRA scammers. They always want info and claim to be the government, and why would the government not have all my info on file. Sometimes i play with them more and give them like celebrity names or serial killers, they don’t even realize it.

I rarely play along .. but one of the few times I did was amusing.

I answered all his questions (with not real info) & I even gave him a real Credit Card number.
chuckles but it was an official “testing” Credit Card number used to tested applications that accept Credit Card payment.

When the scammer came back on the phone after ‘confirming’ the info I gave him, boy was he hopping mad at me for wasting his time ! .. LOL ..

Donoreo

I have those calls for years. A few years ago one speaking Cantonese (I think) was common. We had a guy’s wife translate, it was much the same thing.

Thane_Bitter

GrumpyCanadian No, not that one, but I have had many many calls about amazon orders for Ipads and mac books (ie the iphone 13 which is so dated at this point), I like to play along and then go into the most vulgar and disgusting things that come to my mind, pepper in a few indian words too just to rub some spice into it. They do get angry and that is all the fun. Also lots of CP, 407, parking ticket and bank sms or mms messages (the latter is becoming more popular as they can’t be reported to the usuhal scam bust numbers.

urbanriot

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Same game I sometimes play with the CRA scammers. They always want info and claim to be the government, and why would the government not have all my info on file.

You know, this is a funny one… the CRA will call like this. Just like this.

“Hello this is so and so from the Canadian Revenue Agency, am I speaking with so and so?” “yes…” “okay, to confirm your identity, can you please provide me with your social insurance number?”

In the past decade I’ve had three legitimate CRA calls that went exactly like that. And each and every time I tell them that they should know better than expecting people they call to give that info, to which they say it’s usually not a problem but they understand and instead to call the regular CRA number you can find on the web site which will eventually get to them.

GrumpyCanadian

urbanriot Absolutely agreed; they should know better, and it should be a written policy that they should never do that. If they made sure people knew never to do that, with any incoming call, people would be less likely to fall victim to scams via calls they receive, whatever the ploy or purported context.

On one hand, you have private companies trying to drill it into customers’ heads never to give out passwords, PINs, etc. over the phone, then you have employees from actual government institutions doing this. It’s not helpful.