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Provincial police have arrested three suspects believed to be involved in a police impersonation scam that an Ottawa officer says has cost some victims thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
OPP say the emerging scam involves suspects posing as police officers to defraud victims of “substantial amounts of money.”<\/p>\n
“It can be 20 bucks, but it could be tens of thousands of dollars,” explained Sgt. Cameron Graham, who is in charge of Ottawa Police Service’s financial crimes unit.<\/p>\n
“This is a common tactic for fraudsters in order to gain your trust,” Graham continued. “In fact, my name is being used as a prompt in these scripts in order to convince people to carry on with this fraud.”<\/p>\n
According to an OPP news release, provincial officers received a report of the fraud at a home in Hawkesbury on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The victim had gotten a call from someone pretending to be a police officer. They were told their bank cards had been compromised and that someone would come to their home to retrieve them for security purposes. <\/p>\n
OPP say a female showed up at the victim’s home in a vehicle with two men. Shortly after, the victim discovered their cards were being used to withdraw money.<\/p>\n
Officers in Clarence-Rockland later arrested a female matching the description of the suspect, along with two males, police say.<\/p>\n
It’s unclear whether the three suspects are the same perpetrators committing the frauds in Ottawa. <\/p>\n
‘Stop, check and talk’<\/p>\n
Police in Kingston and Gatineau have also warned about the police impersonation frauds.<\/p>\n
In February, Gatineau police opened 50 cases involving fake police calls. They say seniors are often victims of the scam.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Quaid, executive director of the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange, encourages people to be aware of potential red flags when picking up the phone to avoid falling prey to fraudsters.<\/p>\n
“No matter what the scam is, the solution is in fact very consistent,” she said. “Stop, check and talk… Tell other people so that they are aware this is happening and they don’t fall victim.”<\/p>\n
Provincial police are continuing to investigate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-524653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}