Phil A. McBride: Another way that Canadian cops (and banks) have surrendered

Apparently, a crime in progress is only worth responding to if a lot — a lot! — of money is lost.

By: Phil A. McBride

We’ve all gotten that phone call from “The Department of Service Canada” telling us that our Social Insurance Number has been suspended. We get emails purporting to be from the Canada Revenue Agency telling us that we need to pay our taxes in Bitcoin. One of my favourites are the text messages I often get claiming to be Interac money transfers trying to get my online banking credentials. These people fool the elderly into sending Amazon gift cards in books to addresses well outside the reach of Canadian law enforcement. They teach people to buy cryptocurrency and transfer those funds to their untraceable accounts. 

Cyber crime, and specifically cyber fraud, is becoming an intolerable pox upon our society. Bad actors are bent on stealing from anyone they can fool using technology that many are ignorant of. Attempts like these are usually pretty blatant and the vast majority of us just ignore them, but the reason they keep happening is because someone is falling for them. Besides, it’s almost all upside. These criminals will likely never be caught — they are operating in jurisdictions that either ignore them or that approve, if only tacitly, of what they’re doing and turn a blind eye. 

And sadly, as my recent experience shows, even when we can do something, Canadian police agencies and even bank officials simply can’t be bothered. 

I am a business owner. I have an office, I manage staff, I have bills to pay, I have money to collect, and all the rest. I have a bookkeeper who manages the day-to-day accounts payable and receivable. One day a couple of weeks ago, she sent me an email with an invoice attached asking me to confirm that I wanted it paid.

I’d sent no such e-mail to her. As we discovered when we looked at it more closely, it was a message with my name on it, but from an e-mail address that wasn’t mine. It contained an invoice that looked like it could be legitimate – it referenced a Canadian firm in Toronto, but it didn’t have a sales tax line. It was also in the amount of $9,550, which is just below the amount that would’ve flagged the transaction with the government. 

Normally, I would’ve growled at the audacity of the attempt, deleted the email and forgotten about it, but I noticed something out of the ordinary for these types of interactions: the account that the fraudsters wanted me to send money to was Canadian. Specifically, it was a bank account at a CIBC branch in Gatineau, QC. 

This is a risky move because Canadian law enforcement definitely has the ability to seize and garnishee bank accounts within Canada, subject to due process. So I called the Ontario Provincial Police because I know that they have a well-staffed cyber crime division. I was immediately told that I would have to call the Guelph Police Service, since the attempt was made in their jurisdiction. 

Fine. I found their number and stayed on hold for a while until I got to talk to an officer. I told him who I was, what had happened and that I wanted to make a criminal complaint. I told him that, based on my experience, I would normally not have bothered making the call. But this time, there was a Canadian bank account being used to make the fraud attempt so I thought it was worth the effort. 

Apparently, it wasn’t. I was told that, since there was no actual loss, and even if there was loss, since the amount was less than $50,000, there would likely be no investigation.

It wasn’t that long ago that Line editor Matt Gurney wrote here that Canadian police are surrendering and telling citizens to simply adapt to crime, instead of trying to stop it. I had that column in mind as I reiterated to the officer that I wanted to make this complaint because there was evidence of Canadian banking infrastructure being used to perpetrate this fraud. I can all but guarantee that someone didn’t go through the trouble of setting up a bank account outside of Ottawa just to scam me out of under ten grand. It was likely being used to scam countless others and, if even a short investigation was carried out, they could likely seize those funds and return them – maybe even find the person who set the account up and … imagine this?! … actually hold them responsible for their crimes. 

Nope, it wasn’t going to happen, I was told. It just wasn’t a serious enough crime. I even suggested that I was willing to go to the media and wanted them to confirm what they told me. It didn’t change their mind. There was no loss, so there would be no investigation.

This really, really pissed me off. It’s not often that there is actually something the cops could do about this sort of crime, and they just schluffed it off as not important enough to deal with. 

I decided to try to call the bank directly. I found the number for the branch in question and, after navigating through the automated attendant, got the voicemail of the customer service manager and left a voicemail. A very detailed message, describing exactly what an account at their institution was being used to attempt. No response. I left one the next day. Again, crickets. That was last week. Still nothing. 

For all I know, there was half a million dollars in that account, ready to be wired out of Canada and out of the reach of those who are supposed to enforce the law. It could’ve been from business owners like me, or grandparents fooled into sending their life savings, or some unknowing schmuck who thought he was paying his taxes.

I respect that there are jurisdictional issues at play when we tackle cybercrime, but a suburban city’s police force shouldn’t be responsible for investigating this type of activity. Cybercrime is a highly specialized area of enforcement which should fall to a larger agency like the OPP or the RCMP, which have the resources to staff those divisions with the best of the best. But what I’m seeing from the police here is exactly what Gurney said. This is surrender. Even when they have a relatively easy and straightforward opportunity to stop a bad guy from hurting Canadians, they can’t be bothered. And at least they took my call! CIBC has ignored me entirely.

I spend an inordinate amount of my professional life protecting my clients against these types of criminals. I would feel a lot better about it if I thought that the cops and banks could keep up. Or that they were worried at all.

Phil A. McBride is a friend of The Line and an information technology specialist with over 25 years of experience. He owns readyIT Computing Solutions, a managed I.T. service provider in Guelph which serves clients in Ontario and Quebec (including The Line!).

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