By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

Online dating and revenue scams top 2016 BBB list

Mar 6, 2017 | 3:55 PM

NANAIMO — $90 million was lost last year to scams and frauds, according to the Better Business Bureau.

Online dating scams, such as the one which cost an elderly Nanaimo woman $100,000, came in second on the BBB’s top 10 scams of 2016 list.

In the woman’s case, a man contacted her on the site Match.com over several months and passed himself off as a civil engineer working in China.

At the time, Nanaimo RCMP Cst. Gary O’Brien said the man told the victim he planned to marry her but needed money to fund his various projects. He never arrived at a scheduled meeting and left the woman heartbroken.

“It’s heartbreaking, it’s devastating,” local seniors advocate Kim Slater said. “But it’s a story that’s being repeated too often.”

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Telephone scams are a major component of the various fraud cases listed by the BBB.

In August, 2016 a sophisticated phone scam came to the attention of Oceanside RCMP where residents were contacted by people posing as the police telling them there was a warrant out for their arrest over unpaid taxes or immigration issues.

Oceanside Cpl. Jesse Forman said the initial calls were a way to get personal information from victims. Thankfully no one in that particular instance was deceived and gave away their info.

In 2016, Nanaimo RCMP fielded numerous phone calls of complaints about a common Canada Revenue Agency scam.

Callers would explain taxes from the resident were owed and charges would be laid if the debts weren’t settled.

The BBB noted the CRA scam is one of the most well-known and it defrauded more people in the first half of 2016 than all of 2015.

Already in 2017, eight scams have been reported from the Nanaimo area to the BBB, totalling more than $1,200 lost.

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