Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
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It’s been difficult for even Regina’s mayor to escape the latest scam that’s been hitting people’s cell phones.
“Friends, family, I’ve had them personally,” Chad Bachynski told reporters Tuesday at a meeting of the city’s Board of Police Commissioners.
Read more:
- Mounties warn public about phishing scammers impersonating the RCMP
- Police warn public after $70K lost in ‘grandparent scam’ surge
- Scams and digital fraud on the rise in Saskatchewan
The meeting was told there has been an uptick in complaints, reflected in the June crime statistics report.
“We don’t know the location necessarily, or how these things come about,” Bachynski said. “But I think if we can encourage residents that if you do get that message, it’s easy to, and it’s good to ignore and to not respond to that.
“On top of that, it’s actually good to report to make sure that we can get that data and see if we can tackle those things.”
A June 29 release from Regina Police Service provided details of how the text messages claim the recipient has an “unpaid traffic citation.”
Police Chief Lorilee Davies made it clear that the police service doesn’t operate that way.
“That would never happen through a text message,” she said. “If there was notification of an amount owing, it would be done through the mail, through official venues.
“Obviously, we’re encouraging people not to click on any of those links. And certainly, if they have been victimized, to report to us to let us know, and we can try and dig into it and figure out where those are coming from.”
Speaking to the wider problem of scams, she said the Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police has been lobbying the provincial government to create a cybercrime unit.
“But at the heart of it, it really boils down to collaboration with our other policing partners, provincially, nationally, internationally,” Davies said.
“We have had good success in the grandparent scam. We recently had charges and held people accountable in our community, so that’s always good news.”
According to RPS, Regina residents have lost $6.5 million to scams and cybercrime so far this year.
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