Last July, Edmonton police got a tip about ongoing cyber crimes, bilking people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Their contact was a network of ethical hackers, also known as scam baiters.
Police say they spend countless hours trying to infiltrate scam centres, usually by initially pretending to be a victim themselves.
Their goal is to get access to one of the scammers’ computers, their CCTV cameras and phone lines.
“They can hear victims on the phone, they can see information going back and forth — they in turn provide that intelligence to us,” explained Const. Brian Mason with the Edmonton police virtual investigations unit.
In this case, Mason says the ethical hackers shared victim details with EPS in real time.
Working together with 50 different police and banking groups, including the U.S. Secret Service, investigators intercept the money by freezing bank accounts, or in some cases, even physically sending officers to stop victims before they unknowingly lose their savings.
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“When Brian gets the real-time info, we can contact the bank investigator so they can freeze the account,” explained Agent Pete Murphy with the U.S. Secret Service.
Mason said one particularly notable success happened with a victim in Maricopa, Ariz.
“We had eight minutes’ notice that an individual, no clue who they were, was headed to a bitcoin machine at a gas station,” Mason said.
Armed with only the address of the station, EPS immediately got in touch with corresponding local law enforcement and they jumped into action.
“I spoke to their dispatcher. The patrol officer called me in two minutes and he was driving lights and sirens to that gas station. An individual with only $20,000 left in their life savings was stopped at the machine.”
Mason described those wins as exhilarating.
“There’s immense pain and suffering that are caused to these victims. Sometimes victims will lose their entire life savings,” he explained.
EPS followed the evidence to scam centres primarily in India, with some in Pakistan, the country of Georgia, and the Balkans.
Mason says it’s tough to get arrests in those places, but they are trying.
To date, officers have helped more than 300 victims around the world, including that Arizona bitcoin case and a grandmother in Ontario who was about to turn over $800,000 she’d taken out on a line of credit.
In total, this joint operation has saved victims more than $45 million.
The investigators say it’s critical people report fraud when it happens, so they can better track the criminals.
“The more information that we get from the public about their scams and what type of scam it was and when it was, it helps us, ultimately,” Murphy said.
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