Fraud

Isolated people during the COVID-19 pandemic are being targeted by scammers for online puppy scams. COVID-19 Scams have been making news since March 2020 and it seems like there is no end to what fraudsters can come up with to take advantage of other people. The Better Business Review over Mainland British Columbia is warning Canadians of the recent spike in the number of online puppy scam reports.

It has been weeks since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and it is not yet showing signs of slowing down anytime soon. And yet, members of the Ontario Provincial Police or the OPP Anti-Rackets Branch?s Health Fraud Investigation Unit (HFIU) is busier than ever, citing an increase in the number of health care related scams linked to COVID-19 as the reason.

COVID-19 scams are on the rise, including insurance scams. Although most of the country is either social distancing or are on lockdown, the fraud-fighting community is seeing a rise in the number of insurance fraud cases. The rise is very noticeable and is enough to prompt organizations to issue alerts for their consumers.

Google has been actively fighting off scam emails related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the latest report says the tech giant is blocking around 100 million coronavirus scam emails per day. The coronavirus emails are phishing attacks launched by scammers to collect data such as personal information from unsuspecting individuals.

Not even an economy-stopping pandemic will stop fraudsters. As more nations feel the grip of the increasing health crisis, scammers are taking full advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to send fake emails to people tricking hapless victims into clicking on malicious links or attachments and revealing their personal information.

Covid-19 seems to be everywhere and so are fraud attempts and scams that are related to it. It isn?t new that fraudsters typically take advantage of times when people are confused to create more mayhem and cash-in from fear. Creative fraudsters do not care about what happens tomorrow, they only care about benefitting themselves and will exploit any avenue to do so, even the outbreak of Covid-19.

Real estate fraud has been seeing an increase in incidences lately. Be it title fraud or mortgage fraud, it seems that more people are falling victim to real estate fraud and it?s about time people arm themselves with information for better awareness.

The number one scam in Canada in 2019 was romance scam, with Canadians losing more than $22 million to it. The numbers for 2019 have not fully been tallied, so the number is likely larger than this.