Front Burner - Front Burner Introduces: CBC Marketplace | Our five-year fight to stop scam calls

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

As Canada’s top consumer watchdog, CBC Marketplace looks out for your health, your safety and your money. Hosts Asha Tomlinson and David Common bring you inside eight action-packed investigations, uncovering the truth about popular products and services — and pushing hard for accountability. Phone scammers have stolen millions from Canadian victims and the losses are staggering. This episode takes you inside an investigation the team has been working on for more than five years and introduces you to an inside man at an illegal call centre who’s putting his life on the line to help people. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/L9v9gHxq

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, Tamara here. So we have a special bonus episode for you today from our new podcast, CBC Marketplace, hosted by investigative journalists Asha Tomlinson and David Common. CBC Marketplace looks out for your health, your safety and your money. This episode is called Our Five-Year Fight to Stop Scam Calls, and it takes you inside an investigation that the team's been working on for more than five years. You'll meet an inside man at an illegal call center who's putting his life on

the line to help people and find out how to prevent a phone scam from happening to you. Have a listen. I'm Jim Browning and as soon as they hear that name they will hang up the phone call because they will know it might be somebody watching them that's the voice of a famous white hat hacker who tracks down scammers confronts them and even reports them to local authorities I've been able to see exactly what the scammer is doing, literally have a look at what's on their screen, listen to what they're saying. Phone scammers have stolen millions from Canadian and international victims, and the losses are staggering.

Almost $200,000. Today, we're going to take you inside an investigation we've been working on for over five years. And meet an inside man who's putting his life on the line to help people. I've been kidnapped. I've been run over. I've had my leg broken. You gotta stay with us as we uncover phone scams in progress. And race to stop vulnerable victims from losing money. I am a journalist from CBC.

I'm calling because I believe you may be on the phone or have been recently with someone alleging you owe thousands of dollars. We'll push for answers from an alleged scammer caught in the act. And find out how to prevent a phone scam from happening to you. I'm Asha Tomlinson. And I'm David Common. You're listening to CBC Marketplace. Today we'll be talking about uncovering phone scams in progress and our wild race to stop people from losing their money.

in progress and are wild race to stop people from losing their money. Now, everyone with a phone has experience getting one of those awful scam calls. Look, I know I've gotten my share. And often someone is pretending to be Canada Revenue Agency, FedEx, Amazon, you name it. But how prevalent are these type of scams out there? Yeah, very prevalent. Lots of different incarnations. You've named some of them that are out there, but it is part of a global, multi-layered, increasingly sophisticated scam. People lose millions of dollars a year from these scams. The scammers get very rich off them. They steal people's life savings. So the losses are staggering. And over the course of our investigation, we actually met one person who lost almost 200 grand. She was scammed in September 2020. That's insane. And so it can be devastating for so many people. I want to talk about the

investigation with you because it really is a special one. Yeah, we've been taking on phone scammers for more than five years. And when I say we, I'm looking at the Marketplace executive producer, Nalisha Valani. Along with me, we've investigated several aspects of phone scams. And when we were away, even on different assignments over those years, investigating scam calls is always something that was sort of there as a sideline thing that we were doing off the side of our desks, even in the middle of the night. And that was what I was hearing when everything was going on, right? During this time, what have you come to realize about the nature of phone scams?

What we've learned is that the techniques these scammers are using are really sophisticated. The scammers are part of a global network that has access to all sorts of information, and they use that information to target and exploit specific people. Anyone could become a victim. Yes, they're very often targeting people who are new Canadians, people from countries where governments would actually threaten arrest or jail time over the phone, would say the police are coming. They may target elderly people, people who've fallen for scams before, people with cognitive challenges. They know who to target. And very often it means they're targeting people who really can't afford to lose any money.

lose any money. And in the last five years, Marketplace has certainly met a lot of victims. But this next phase of the investigation, that's even more intense, right? I mean, you're investigating phone scammers from the inside. And that took us to India, which is in many ways the epicenter for where a lot of these call centers operate. Looking at a global scam from the inside, we were able to get this insider's view because we had a call center source, a guy who worked inside. We're calling him Casey Hunter, not his real name. That's a pseudonym to protect his real identity. And Casey agreed to meet in New Delhi, where he revealed a lot about the inner workings of a call centre. What were the most significant details you heard? When we spoke in June 2021, Casey had been working inside India-based call centres for more than five years.

He said he's worked in at least 10 of them and really knows the ins and outs of these operations. He told us the scammers target English-speaking countries, Canada, the US, the UK and Australia primarily. He said the tactics they use at the call centres are relentless and once they find that someone is vulnerable, if you've fallen or nearly fallen for a scam before, they'll be back, threatening arrest unless a payment is made. And how often do people fall for it? Let's just say in a day there is always three, four, that fall for it. Every day? Every day there is somebody.

Sometimes these people, they burst into tears. They're like, we've never done this before. We are low-biding citizens. You know, people are being victimized, and it sounds like eventually all this scamming is getting to Casey, eh? Yeah, weighs on his conscience. He tells us that he started to realize the hurt he was causing people, that there was the sentiment among many scammers that,

well, these are people who can afford to lose this money. He started to realize that was not the case and wanted to make a change in his life. When you have these people crying, you know, this is wrong what you're doing. Someone offered me a way out. I took that way out and I started saving people. I took that way out and I started saving people. That person who offered Casey a way out, it was a private investigator from Canada. Tell us more about him and how they even got connected. I know it's a bit wild.

How do these two meet from totally different worlds? It's an odd one because how does this PI who's in Windsor, Ontario, and Casey in a call center in India get connected? Well, they got connected because Casey was trying to scam him. Calls him up. The PI realizes what's going on. Not going to get into it. Starts chatting with Casey

and begins to understand why Casey's doing this. It's how he's making money. And so the PI says, look, I want to help you, but I want to help you stop scamming. And so I'm going to do that by sending you $100. And Casey makes a big decision. He decides he's going to flip the script along with this PI. Casey no longer wants to work on the side of the scammers. Instead, the two of them teamed up as an unlikely duo in

2018. Then it just started. I would get these obscure messages, very quiet, very, you know, detailed saying, hey, you know, quickly do this right now. It's happening right now. Contact this person. Like someone's about to lose money. Someone is losing money right now. They're in the bank as we speak, stop them, save them. They're going to lose every damn penny of it. Right. So it's a tag team. Casey starts working with this PI as an inside man to try to stop scams as they're happening.

And it turns from like this hobby of saving people into more like a full-time job. This becomes a partnership that would actually save Canadians millions of dollars. Have there been crazy times that you've got a message from Casey and you've had to just drop everything? We were in the middle of a snow blizzard and I got that message from Casey that says, you need to call this one right now.

She has $96,000 and they're going to take every penny of it. Call her now. The bottom line was it was an incredible save. She didn't lose her money. I can't wrap my head around $96,000. That is a lot to lose. And it's not the only big save, though. There's a recording of the private investigator in the middle of an intervention attempt at a TD bank where another woman was about to lose a lot of money. I mean, right about to do it. Like, it is wild. She is withdrawing the money in this moment. Hi, this is an emergency. I'm a fraud investigator in Ontario here, Windsor. You have a customer that I believe is into your bank about to withdraw $16,000 for a telephone scam marketing that's going on right now.

Could you check with your front counter? So a really close call. The bank manager had actually just approved the wire transfer. They were almost sending the money. That's when the PI got through to the bank. They stopped the wire transfer. I mean, literally in the nick of time, save someone from losing all of that cash. Unbelievable. David, this partnership between Casey and the PI sounds pretty effective. The truth is, though, there's a lot at stake for Casey.

What would happen to Casey if the wrong people found out what he was up to? I think there's a pretty good chance he'd be killed. Wow. This is big business. And it is organized crime, both here in Canada and in India. And that certainly puts Casey in harm's way. Big time criminals we're talking about. Casey tells us a lot of people are involved. And shockingly, Casey told us there have been serious consequences for him not being on their side. That was when we spoke in June 2021.

I've been kidnapped. I've been run over. I've had my leg broken. So these are very serious people. This is a big criminal operation that is making money and clearly wants to protect it. Here's what's interesting, though. Despite all of that, Casey says that's not going to stop him. You think about all the sort of violent response you've faced. Why do you still do this? Because it's the right thing to do. I sleep better at night because I know I saved somebody today.

Okay, so we mentioned at the start of this conversation that this investigation was different from others you've worked on before. Part of that's because you've been on this story for so long. You and Marketplace executive producer Nalisha Vill, didn't just learn about phone scams. You got into action yourselves and actually stopped some of the phone scams in the moment. How did your moonlighting as a fraud fighter go? I like the idea of moonlighting. Look, we had met so many victims that you really wanted to do something and not just tell their story. And we got so deep into it that we were working with citizen fraud fighters and intercepting scams as they happened. And I'll tell you, it has been crazy.

We would get alerts from people who knew about scams as they were happening at all hours of the day, letting us know someone was about to lose money. I mean, about to lose it. And then so we would spring into action. It doesn't matter what we were doing. Sometimes it was sleeping in the middle of the night. Sometimes we were on other assignments. And as soon as we get that call,

you try to get a hold of the target of the scam to stop them from sending money. Okay. It is 6 a.m. here in Ottawa. Just got an alert that there's a scam in progress. Hi, Nalisha. Hi, David. There's a person on the phone right now who's agreed to pay thousands of dollars. That's ringing.

Welcome to the EE voicemail. I'm sorry, but the person you've called is not available. Do you want to just text that person? And we stuck at it. Hello? Hi there. The person you're talking to on the other line is a phone scammer. Okay.

He's trying to take your money, but he is not from the government. Thank you. Good. We stopped it. Scam interrupted. Virtual high five. Amazing. You know, at Marketplace, we like to say we've got your back.

That's our motto. When you think about you and Alicia, you took that to a whole other level. Of course, every time you got a tip about a scam, there was no way of knowing if you'd even be able to intervene in time. Can we talk more about those tense moments? And let's start with a story about a man named Justin. So this is one of those instances where I was, I was actually out of the country on a different assignment. I was in New Jersey by the water. That was August 2021. And we get this urgent tip that someone was being scammed. So we stop everything we're doing and call up this guy, Justin, who's about to become another victim of this phone scam. Justin, my name is David Common.

I'm a journalist with CBC. We have reason to believe you've been contacted by scammers out of India. This is an intense moment because time is not on our side. The scam is in progress while we're on the phone. So we have to convince him, the victim, that we're the good guys

or he's going to lose money. So after some back and forth, we do get him to admit that he's received the call. They said it was a troll job. They said my computer, they did log on remotely. do get him to admit that he's received the call. Justin, I want to stop you here. This is the tech support scam. Call Visa and stop it.

Moments later, we got a call back from Justin. Thank you very much. I put a stop to my visa. Excellent. They're really good at this. Yes, it sounds very legitimate. And I am skeptical. I was a police sergeant for 30 years. Oh, boy. Oh, boy is right.

These criminals are highly sophisticated. Anyone could fall victim to this. Yeah, anyone can fall for these scams now. And Nalisha, she had some wild moments too. She rushed to save an elderly woman in Sudbury from being defrauded. Lorraine was her name and Nalisha got to her just in time. I am a journalist from CBC. I'm calling because I believe you may be on the phone or have been recently with someone alleging you owe thousands of dollars.

Is that correct? Okay, I just wanted to call and let you know that that is a scam. And the person you've been speaking with is a phone scammer. And I just want to make sure that you're not going to pay them any money. So I'll just disregard them then. Okay. Thank you very much. What a feel-good ending.

And months later, in January 2022, we met up with Lorraine in Sudbury, Ontario. What did she say? Yeah, I was up in Sudbury on another assignment, and Lorraine said to me that the scammers said she's overpaid one of her bills and that they were going to reimburse her. He said something about I had overpaid something. I said, well, how could I pay? I know I paid my bill, but I paid what it was. And he said, no, there's $140 that comes to you. It's a very tricky type of scam.

That's, of course, when Alicia called and told her, just shut down your computer. But that's not all. At the time, Lorraine thought what the scammers were trying to do was take $1,000 from her. But what they were actually trying to take is way more. You think they were trying to take $1,000 from you? Yeah. Which is a lot of money. Well, yeah.

But here's the thing. Because we could see inside the scamming operation, we know what they were trying to get from you. $38,000. Oh. Well, if you could go into my bank account. Yeah. So thankful for an Alicia. Like, every day I say thank you. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing.

In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. All right, so here's where things get really intense, because as we've mentioned, the team wasn't working alone to fight these scammers. In fact, along with your inside man, Casey, we also connected and collaborated with none other than Jim Browning. Yeah. Big deal. A famous white hat hacker who, yeah, like you said, is kind of a big deal. Yeah. This is the rocket fuel to the investigation. For people who may not be a cybersecurity nerd like me, I just have to tell you, Jim Browning is an absolute celebrity in this space.

People know him. Because while authorities are slow to crack down, good guy hackers like Jim have found creative solutions to stop scammers. Essentially, he is well known for posting videos where he intercepts a lot of the scams we've been talking about today, like the tech support scam, refund scams, CRA scams. His work has earned him over 4 million subscribers on YouTube, and he has often helped authorities take down major operations. The reason why I'm calling is, I don't know if you're aware, but the whole thing is a scam. It seriously sounds like something out of the movies, right? Hollywood blockbuster here. It feels like that in many ways. Yeah. He's a very approachable guy, but what he's doing is

bonkers. You and the team got to meet him in London, England in March 2022. David, what was that like? Okay, so Jim's not his real name, but we did get exclusive access to him. And when we met him, it was a vibe. He's wearing a hoodie and a mask and sunglasses inside, all to protect his identity. It could be incredibly dangerous if anyone actually found out who he actually is. dangerous if anyone actually found out who he actually is. He's become so known by scammers that they are sometimes able to identify him on the line. Some of them actually recognize my voice. And in fact, I've heard of other people use the word, oh, I'm Jim Browning, or I know about Jim Browning. And as soon as they hear that name, they will hang up the phone call because they will know it might be somebody watching them.

Being a phone fraud fighting hacker, say that three times fast, is a unique hobby. No doubt about that. Meeting Jim and speaking with him, did you get insight into why he got into this kind of work? Well, he got into it for the same reason we did, because of the influx of scam calls that he and people he knew were getting. And so they just become too much. And he thought, hey, I'm a guy who's got the skill set to actually stop them. Really, it all started whenever I was sitting at home and I was getting lots and lots of scam phone calls. And I thought, I know about computers.

I'm an engineer. I know about computer networks. Surely I can I know about computers. I'm an engineer. I know about computer networks. Surely I can do something about it. You know, David, that wouldn't be my reaction to getting one of these calls. I know there are other people out there. They wouldn't be thinking that. Jim, though he has this sophisticated operation going on these days. Can you explain exactly how he does it?

Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary. When we spoke to Jim, he was monitoring seven or eight of these call centers that are based in India. And he's watching for a hack. What Jim told me is that he turns the tables on the hackers when they're trying to steal money because he hacks back. So they will want to connect to my computer. And because of that, I have a chance to go back to their computer. So in order to open up access to your computer, they have to open the door to their own and you're taking advantage of that?

Exactly. I try to gather as much information about the victim as I can and I will immediately try to phone that victim. Sometimes I can't intercept that scam and actually prevent it from happening. So Jim uses this weakness against the hackers and sometimes even can see a scam happening from the perspective of the scammer, basically by being inside that scammer's computer. I've been able to see exactly what the scammer is doing, literally have a look at what's on their screen, listen to what they're saying, and in fact, I'm able to see what they're doing from that point onwards.

And what's really cool is you saw something like this actually go down. Walk us through play by play of that day. This is one of the most intense ones of the entire five year investigation. Jim sees a Canadian, another Canadian, being hooked in, and we learn that an elderly man named Brian is in the middle of being duped. This time, they're working the Amazon refund scam, saying Brian is owed money because of a transaction error. So we try to interrupt the call.

You have reached the voice mailbox of... Try again. And Jim Browning can see the scam playing out in real time because the scammers have hacked into the victim's webcam. Let me get this straight. And Jim's hacked into theirs? Exactly. And so at this moment, we can see and hear everything

from both Brian and the scammer's computers. We're desperately trying to at this moment, we can see and hear everything from both Brian and the scammers' computers. We're desperately trying to intercept this scam, calling and calling and calling. But Brian has been directed not to answer the call, and he's not. I'm hearing this and I'm thinking, seems like we're running out of time and options at this point. Brian's about to lose a lot of cash. You had to bring in reinforcements. Yes. So we're not able to get a hold of him ourselves.

We were too far away to physically reach him. But we know this is a man who might be about to lose everything. So if we can't stop it, maybe the police can.

I'm calling to report what we believe is a fraud in progress. Now, we can't stop it, but we can see that they have taken control of his computer. He needs to shut his computer down. It's his life savings.

He's about to lose. We'll see what we do. So the police, they're on their way. The clock is ticking. Brian is dangerously close to becoming a victim of fraud. You and the team have only one move left to play. Distraction.

Yeah. Call the scammer to see if we can either convince him to stop or eat time. I call up the men who Jim believes are the scammers and identify myself as a journalist and say, hey, you know, what you're doing is illegal. They are not having any of it. They're completely unmoved by anything I'm saying. If anything, it just emboldens them. This scammer continues to deny

that he's scamming anyone. And he was using some colorful language to tell me off. Some expletives were dropped. Lots of censoring. Exactly. Also, exactly. Also remember that, you know, we can still see inside Brian's home and Brian, the scammer on the line with him. But all of a sudden on that screen, we see the word police on a uniform, on a person who's just walked in the door, who engages with the scammer and says, oh, no, not having any of this, powers it down.

Listening to this drama unfold is incredible, David. It's another save, this time with the help of police. Through the webcams, white hat hacker Jim Browning saw all of this go down, too. What was his reaction when he finally saw the police intervene? You know, for a guy who's been fighting fraudsters for as long as he has, and as much as he's done, you'd think he wouldn't get all that excited about this anymore. But I spoke with him and I got that wrong. Well, I was ready to cheer at that point because I could not have gotten in touch with that victim. And thankfully, you guys intervened and got the police just the

right time. So that was good going. I have to ask though, David, after everything we've covered today and the awesome interventions, we got to say the Marketplace team has been involved in, let's give credit where credit is due. How does it feel for you to have been on this investigation for so long? You know, we've been doing this work for a long time. For us to be on one project this long is unusual. And we so often talk to people after they've lost so much money. This is a very rare time where we've won, they've won, we've saved people's life savings. And it especially feels good that we're able to connect with that person afterwards. People like Brian, who we did connect with at his door.

I can't thank you enough. I'm more than happy with you guys. You saved my neck, that's for sure. Thanks so much. And we're so glad it turned out the way it did. Thank you very much. I tell you, you saved my neck. That's for sure. Thanks so much. And we're so glad it turned out the way it did. Thank you very, very much. I do appreciate what you've done. Not at all.

Yeah, I'm glad we were able to do it. Yeah. So am I. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all for now.

This investigation was produced by Nilesha Vellani. Our sound design was by Sam McNulty. Special thanks to Laura Antonelli for technical work. The podcast was produced by Shiloh Fagan. The senior producer is Shannon Higgins. And our executive producer is Nilesha Vellani. I'm Asha Tomlinson. And I'm David Common.

Thanks for listening to CBC Marketplace. That was an episode from CBC Marketplace. You can head over to their podcast feed right now for more episodes.