The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) is warning the public about a scam involving fake police officers and fake bank employees working together.<\/p>\n
The scam starts with a phone call from someone claiming to be an employee at the victim\u2019s financial institution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey get the victim to tell them information,\u201d Const. Megan Lui told 1130 NewsRadio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey confirm the identity, personal date of birth, where they live, where they work.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the victim is on the phone with the fake bank employee, they get another call from a phone number that spoofs the local police department\u2019s non-emergency number.<\/p>\n
At that point, they speak to someone claiming to be a police officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re investigating a fraud.\u2019 And that\u2019s when the victim tells them, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m already on the phone with the bank,’\u201d Lui said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s when the officer tells them, \u2018OK, go ahead, send the money to the bank, you can go do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victim hangs up the call with the \u201cpolice officer,\u201d who says they will follow up on the call later. The victim then returns to the \u201cbank employee,\u201d who says money has been deposited into their account.<\/p>\n
They then tell the victim to go to a bitcoin ATM, buy bitcoin in the amount of the deposit, and send it to them.<\/p>\n
Lui says police will never call a member of the public to ask for money or bitcoin.<\/p>\n
Police say several victims \u2014 including two in their 30s \u2014 have fallen prey to the scam, losing a total of around $10,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) is warning the public about a scam involving fake police officers and fake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-611218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611218","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=611218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}