Sussex woman loses thousands in phone scam
A woman from Sussex, N.B., has been scammed out of $3,000.
Michelle Morrison, 25, is still shocked that it happened to her. She is sharing her story in hopes of alerting other people to the phone scam.
Morrison said she answered her phone and was surprised to hear the caller tell her she was under federal investigation for money laundering.
"I've had these calls before, but it wasn't quite like that," Morrison said. "Normally I would hang up."
But what hooked Morrison into believing the call genuine was in connection to an incident in 2016.
"A few years ago somebody stole my wallet in Montreal with my social insurance card in it," she said.
The caller had listed Montreal as one of the places that her identity was being used. Morrison started to believe the investigation was real.
From there, the caller convinced Morrison to go to the bank and empty her savings account to protect the money she had in the bank.
She was told she couldn't hang up and that she was being recorded. She was told she couldn't tell anybody about it because they might be involved.
Morrison went to her bank and withdrew $4,400 from her account, while still keeping the caller on the phone.
She was then instructed to spend all the money on Google Play and Steam gift cards.
Morrison spent $3,000 on the cards at two different stores and gave the codes to the person on the phone.
She was about to spend her final $1,400 at Canadian Tire, but the clerk stepped in.
"And the guy came up and was like, 'Listen, I'm not going to sell these cards to you because there's a scam going around', and I was like, 'Oh my god,'" Morrison said.
She said she's grateful to the employee.
"Also, just the relief of it not being true, that somebody is trying to steal my identity."
Morrison called the card companies, and the RCMP, to report what happened. She's not hopeful she'll get her money back.
Sgt. Nick Arbour, with the RCMP in New Brunswick, said complaints of this type are investigated with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Agency.
"No government agency, legitimate business, or financial institution would threaten clients or ask them to pay using iTunes, or Google Play gift cards, or cryptocurrency," Arbour said.
Arbour said that anyone who has been a victim of a similar scam can contact local police and financial institutions.
