Protect yourself against fraud

By Graeme McNaughton/The Oshawa Express

While March may be Fraud Prevention Month, there are things you can do throughout the year to prevent yourself from becoming a victim.

And when it comes to fraud, there is no shortage of potential scams out there.

“It’s not that we see certain things more often than others,” Det. Pat Waters, a three-year veteran of Durham police’s fraud unit, tells The Oshawa Express.

“Generally, we’ll see frauds come and go in waves. They can be waves of telescams, where someone’s calling your house and offering you discount deals on credit card payments, or the granny scam which is still alive and well in Durham Region, and we’ll get the emails coming through.”

Waters adds other types of scams, such as mail fraud, can be especially hard for one part of the population.

“The mail fraud is particularly heinous against our senior citizens. These people are professional scammers and will contact someone over the phone or on the Internet and strike up a friendship and have access to their money in a short period of time,” Waters says.

“Those ones are painful because we get to see the drain that that puts not only on the senior, but also on the senior’s family.”

And in Durham Region, the amount of fraud reports is on the rise, going from 1,586 reports in 2012 to 1,852 in 2014, according to annual reports from the force.

However, even with those growing numbers and no shortage of potential scams awaiting in Durham Region, Waters says it’s easy to protect yourself.

“(People) can be careful,” Waters says, adding that most of the time, all it takes is to do your research.

“Right now, it’s spring time, and a lot of people are going to be looking to get painting done, fence building, deck building, lawn work. Maybe some stuff done inside. If you have someone that’s coming to your door, looking for your business, say, to pave your driveway, and you want to get some work done, be careful. Get three quotes done, check with the Better Business Bureau or the chamber of commerce, ask your friends, check online, use the resources that are around before you invest your money. Some of these jobs are…thousands of dollars, and we want to make sure that we do our due diligence in finding out what kind of contractors we’re dealing with.”

Waters also advises protecting your PIN number when you use your credit or debit card, don’t use the same password for all of your accounts, change your passwords regularly, don’t reply to emails from your bank – banks don’t send out emails about account information, Waters says – and to keep an eye on your bills to be sure your identity or credit card information hasn’t been stolen.

Waters says it’s important to protect yourself against fraud, as more and more criminals are realizing the money-making potential.

“Often we’re seeing gang people, drug people, active criminals who are robbery people flipping over from those crimes to fraud because it’s more profitable, but the time in jail is going to be much less,” he says.

Durham police will be hosting a fraud awareness seminar at the McLaughlin Branch of the Oshawa library on Thursday, March 24 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. For more information, please visit drps.ca.