A local mother was recently scammed out of thousands of dollars, in what police are calling the ‘Emergency Scam.’
According to the Kelowna RCMP, the woman received an overseas call from a man claiming to be her son. He told her that he had injured someone in a car accident in a foreign country and needed immediate financial aid.
“The Kelowna mother, a woman in her early 70’s, answered a total of seven calls and sadly transferred over $10,500 in Canadian funds to the con-artist, to support the costs he claimed were associated to legal fees, impound lot fees and accommodation, to name a few,” says RCMP Corporal Jesse O’Donaghey. “Despite this mother’s gut instinct to consult and involve another family member, in this case the woman’s daughter, the fraudster pled with the victim to keep the information a secret.”
Police are warning the public that scammers could be looking through their social media, websites, or even ancestry sites in order to collect personal information.
For more information on this scam, go to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre website.