Police in west coast British Columbia are again this month warning seniors to be wary of the “grandson” scam, also known as the “grandparent scam”.
Police know them as “emergency” scams, as the caller is not always claiming to be a grandson, but might be a so-called family friend or neighbour, but the caller is always in some kind of “emergency” situation. Police say these scams are almost always well-organized operations.
In recent weeks scammers have already managed to bilk a number of elderly people in west-coast British Columbia of amounts ranging from a few thousand dollars to over $20-thousand.
The scam involves desperate telephone calls from someone most often claiming to be a “grandson” in some kind of serious trouble, usually with the law.
The caller/grandson then begs for an amount of money to be sent immediately to an address in order to get them out of the situation. They always insist on the request of the seniors, often elderly women, to not discuss it with others in the family so the “grandson” won’t be shamed.
In the past instances the caller posed as the actual grandson. The Royal Canadian Monted Police (RCMP) in Nanaimo B C say this new version is slightly more believable.
The recent spate of calls, originating from Peru, claim to be from a lawyer representing the grandson who is in jail and can’t be released until money is paid. The caller then provides a 10-digit code to a local wire transfer kiosk. In the past few weeks about $35 thousand dollars in total has been scammed from BC seniors.
This grandson scam has been going on for years,
In 2010, an elderly couple in BC recieved a phone call from, someone claiming to be their grandson “Levi” in Montreal. The person said he was in a car accident and needed thousands of dollars to pay for his lawyer, his destroyed rental car and a plane ticket home to B.C. That person aslo requested the couple keep it to themselves as “he” was embarrassed and didn’t want anyone to know. The couple were convinced it was their grandson and wired $12,000 .
In 2012 a scammer contacted an 87 year old BC woman again playng on her maternal instinct to help and to keep a secret. In this case the scammer said he’d been arrested for drunk driving -also in Montreal- and didn’t want his parents to find out. Several calls were made all needing more money for new problems
Her son later said she would withdraw relatively small amounts from her savings. He said the scammer told her not to withdraw large amounts at once so as to avoid attracting attention. Eventually it amounted her entire all savings of $20,000 before her son found out. Although the Montreal addresses were known, Quebec Provincial Police (Surete Quebec) never followed up and no-one was arrested.
RCMP statistics show that as of spring of last year 748 seniors have fallen victim to the grandparents scam in Canada and collectively they lost $2.5 million.
However, police estimate only five per cent of cases are reported, which means there could be several thousand victims with losses as high as $50 million.
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