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The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) says it has helped to prevent potential victims from losing more than $42 million to scammers in recent months through collaboration with ethical hackers, the United States Secret Service and the Collin County Sheriff’s Office in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe days of phone scams have changed,\u201d EPS Chief Warren Driechel said during a news conference on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, cryptocurrency and digital frauds have amounted to global losses of up to $1.2 trillion US in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cCriminals are getting smarter, more innovative and [are] reaching further.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
EPS said it began its relationship with ethical hackers in July of 2025. They did not say if the ethical hackers receive payment from law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
Oftentimes, scammers will impersonate federal agencies like the Canada Revenue Agency or even the RCMP in an attempt to intimidate potential victims in order to take advantage of them, EPS said.<\/p>\n
The scope and scale of the crimes is what led EPS to seek the help of what they describe as an ethical hacker network.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They said the hackers who work with police, also known as scam baiters, provide police with intelligence related to in-progress scams.<\/p>\n
EPS said these ethical hackers intercept the victim\u2019s information and share it with police.<\/p>\n
EPS, the U.S. Secret Service and the Collin County Sheriff\u2019s Office have all contacted victims and disrupted fund transfers.<\/p>\n
This has also involved contacting law enforcement agencies in the victim\u2019s jurisdiction and engaging banks and service providers to stop or freeze financial accounts before losses occurred.<\/p>\n
EPS said it has helped to contact more than 50 law enforcement agencies, including agencies in the U.K., the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n
EPS said since July 2025, law enforcement agencies worked with over 300 victims, preventing losses for each of them as a result of this collaborative work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe information that ethical hackers provided to the EPS was shared with the U.S. Secret Service,\u201d said Peter Murphy, the resident agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service\u2019s Vancouver Resident Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[This] allowed us not only to notify victims who were often unaware they were being targeted, but also helped initiate multiple investigations that may lead to prosecution of those responsible for these crimes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s immense pain and suffering that are caused to these victims,\u201d said Const. Brian Mason with EPS\u2019 virtual investigations team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes victims will lose their entire life savings, they’ll end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt, because they believe these scammers, and it’s not a hardship or harm that’s temporary, this goes on.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can be life altering for a lot of people.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-690388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690388","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=690388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}