Pushy calls and a low-interest scam: Why this St. John's man is warning consumers

A St. John's man is among thousands of Canadians who have had their personal information compromised through a low-interest credit card scam.

A Marketplace investigation has found that the phone scam promises to lower a person's credit card interest rate, but instead, their identity is stolen, with the intent to sell it on the dark web or to other fraudsters.

Paul Williams says in the summer of 2017, he was getting calls about lowering the interest rate on his credit card.

"[The call centre operator] knew my credit card numbers. He knew my social insurance number. He knew basically everything about me," he said. "I thought it was kind of real."

But Williams said his suspicions were raised when the man on the line kept prodding him for more information.

"He wanted to know my last three numbers on the back of my [credit] card, and that's the numbers I wouldn't give to him. And then he hung up," he said.

"A couple of weeks later, he called again [with] the same thing, and then I started to [think], 'OK. This is some kind of a scam.'"

Williams says he suspects his information was initially compromised when his wife made an online purchase — but he says he really doesn't know for sure just how that operator got his personal information.

Around the same time as the calls, he says he noticed a $1,000 charge on his credit card for a laptop that he didn't buy, which showed up on his statement as being shipped to an address in Quebec.

Williams says his credit card company's fraud department took care of the charge.

Canadians targeted in scam

Even though he got rid of that credit card shortly after, that number, and more of Williams's personal information — including his address, phone numbers, and date of birth — are still out there.

Williams's name is on a secret list of close to 3,000 Canadians that CBC's Marketplace obtained from a source. Those thousands of people appear to have had their personal information compromised.

This is how it can play out: you receive a call from "Credit Card Services," saying that they're working on your behalf, and want to reduce the interest rate on your credit card for a one-time fee.

But before that transaction can be completed, you're asked to verify your personal information: including your credit card information, address, date of birth — even your social insurance number.

Your credit card could also be charged, anywhere from $500 to $5,000, but in the end, the interest rate remains unchanged.

Mohammad Yousfi, who spoke exclusively to CBC's Marketplace, worked as a scam call centre operator for the past 20 years.

"The whole idea is to actually get a consumer's... personal financial information, which could actually later be used for various different malicious purposes," he said.

"It could be used to go ahead and apply for new credit cards. The same information could be used to go and clone the credit cards and then misuse them. It could actually be used to refinance their houses, their mortgages, their cars. Clean [out] their bank accounts."

Yousfi says Canadians and Americans are the favourite targets for this scam — especially those between the ages of 55 to 85.

"[The] majority of the people who actually fall for this are already... indebted to their necks," he said. "So they're looking for a way out."

Claudiu Popa, a cybersecurity expert, told Marketplace that low-interest scams have been around for at least the last decade.

"Personal information is literally money... Any criminal can take [it] and put [it] together in a variety of different ways to commit a variety of different crimes," he said.

"Information is all about being packaged and being parceled off for someone to buy."

'Be very cautious'

Back in St. John's, Williams says with the way technology works these days, he's not shocked that his personal information is out there.

But he says he's definitely more careful now. After receiving those calls, he got new credit cards.

Williams has some advice for others.

"Be very cautious," he said. "Don't give any information [out] on the phone." Watch Marketplace on Friday, Feb. 22 at 8:30 NST as Makda Ghebreslassie dives into the dark web to find out where your personal information may end up... and how we might be able to stop it.

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