Scams are ever-growing

The word “scam” is relatively new in terms of everyday use. The internet has, of course, vaulted it to commonality and concern. A quick tour through the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Scams and Safety section, or through the Canadian Anti-fraud Centre, shows that sadly, there are seemingly endless fraudulent schemes out there. From the so-called Nigerian scam where an alleged government official wants to get funds out of his country by putting them in your bank account, to fake giveaways on social media designed to phish out passwords and credit cards, there is a new one born every minute.

All too often, vulnerable senior citizens are heavily targeted by scammers. Certainly it must be emphasized that not all organizations targeting seniors—or the public generally—are criminal, but they can be tricky in their marketing techniques. Several years ago, we were shocked, checking my late mother-in-law’s mail, to discover in her diminishing intellectual capacity due to encroaching dementia that she was treating legitimate solicitations from various charities as bills to be paid.
She was also a very religious woman with a very soft heart for almost any kind of charitable organization.

So, when she responded with a donation to one solicitation, the pressure inevitably increased. These were legal, honest to goodness, charities—but turning up the heat on donors was the obvious modus operandi. So, when each increased solicitation arrived, she just paid it with all her regular bills. Dependent on pensions and savings, she was shelling out significant sums every month before we discovered the issue and put a stop to it. But as the costs of her care increased incrementally and the formerly significant life savings of this frugal retired accountant eventually eroded to zero, her children were obliged to support her in her final years.

Perhaps surprisingly, one of the most widespread scams out there these days relates to seafood. The average person cannot identify filleted fish by sight, so substituting cheap fish fillets such as haddock for more expensive species like cod or halibut is easy—and apparently has become quite common. This isn’t a criminal enterprise as such; just cheating on an enormous scale by otherwise legitimate organizations.

This outright fraud on Canadian consumers (and throughout the world) apparently continues unabated.

Oceana Canada, an independent charity, is part of the largest international advocacy group by the same name dedicated solely to ocean conservation. The results of a study it conducted recently disclosed 43 per cent of its fish DNA samples were mislabeled. Oceana says its testing identified many instances where products labelled as butterfish or tuna were actually a genus called escolar, which is banned from sale in several countries, and can cause unpleasant gastrointestinal distress.

Oceana Canada suggests the federal government has not followed through on its 2019 promise to implement a seafood traceability program.

Between 2017 and 2019 the group tested 472 seafood samples in four cities and found almost half of seafood was mislabeled.

The group says its latest report shows very little improvement in the results—mislabeling among unwitting restaurants increased from 56 per cent to 65 per cent since the 2019 study. The group is calling for full boat-to-plate traceability through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

And of course, not all the scamming danger is online or on plates. The good, old-fashioned telephone is still predominant. We had occasion quite recently to be targeted by such people and it embarrassingly took a little too long to tumble to them—but when we did, we played along for fun and out of curiosity. It has to be conceded that they’re good.

However, once advised that she was tumbled and had been had, a courteous and silky-voiced woman instantly revealed her true character by uttering words that would make a sailor blush. World-wide, scamming is a multi-billion dollar enterprise annually. Not only is the number of victims on the rise, the expense of these scams is also up. The average reported loss in the US was about $502 per person.

We must assume Canada has similar numbers.