Since mid-December, Sharon Leamy has received as many as 15 calls a day from international phone numbers, all part of a call-back scam commonly known as Wangiri fraud.
“It started December 16 — I started getting calls from strange numbers that I didn’t identify and they were just constant,” she said.
“I would block them and as soon as I blocked them, I would get a new call from a different country.”
Leamy said the calls became so frequent, she thought the only way to stop them was to call back and have them remove her number
“I called the number thinking I could get them to take them off this calling list,” she said.
Leamy called her phone company and they informed her that she had been charged $10 for a 10-second phone call.
“There doesn’t seem to be any boundaries. They call and wake me up in the morning and I have had to learn to turn my phone off at night,” she said.
Phone companies have issued warnings about unknown numbers calling clients as part of the scam.
Jessica Gunson, the acting call centre and intake unit manager with Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, said people in different provinces have reported similar scams but there are ways charges can be avoided.
Gunson said incidents can also be reported to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre’s website.
Leamy said she reported 15 phone numbers to the RCMP, who are investigating, and her phone company has refunded her money, but she wants people to be aware when receiving calls from unfamiliar numbers.
Read the full story over at Global News.
This story was summarized by Canadian Fraud News Inc.
