Stay Cyber Safe: Scammers defraud residents using fake mayor and city Facebook accounts

BY TVISHA MISTRY

Cyber Crimes are a greater threat to society than ever before. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, approximately 45,000 Canadians were victims of fraud; losing more than $96 million in 2019.

With constantly improving technologies, and it’s growing network, individuals need to protect their online identity and personal data more than ever.

Recently local residents were defrauded by imposters who made false promises of COVID-19 relief funds with the use of Mayor Patrick Brown and Councilor Rowena Santos’ fake social media handles.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, Councilor Rowena Santos, and the City of Brampton’s Facebook accounts were all targeted for the scam. In all the cases, the scammers created fake Facebook Messenger accounts mimicking the official pages.

Commenting on the City of Brampton cyber-attack Mayor Patrick Brown said, “When they (residents) get a message from the City of Brampton or a city councilor, or the mayor, people take it seriously,” he said. “You could never have been able to tell that (the fake account) wasn’t official because the replication that is done is very sophisticated.”

Once detected, the illegitimate accounts were immediately reported to the Peel Regional Police, who then took action and issued a warning to residents. With the help of the city’s IT staff, the police were able to stop the scamsters and take down the accounts.

The scamsters’ ploy was very effective and several residents along with a few local businesses were exploited and defrauded of their money.

“One person that they had messaged was a contact of mine, who ended up falling for some of the actions from the fake account and ended up giving and transferring money,” Councilor Santos told the council on January 20^th, adding her account had been targeted at least four or five times.

The Peel Police had confirmed an investigation into the City of Brampton cyberattack, but the inquiry has now been transferred to the RCMP’s fraud department in British Columbia, for a more thorough examination.

“Generally, police files are investigated at their point of origin – where the offense took place. This can be difficult to establish when crimes are committed over the internet, but in this situation, the investigating officers have reason to believe that, though the victims are in one part of Canada, the offense was allegedly committed in part by people in another part of the country,” read a statement from the RCMP. “Police in British Columbia and Ontario are working together to ensure that victims are receiving support and that necessary information is shared between the officers involved,” it added.

While imitation accounts are a frequent occurrence on Facebook, Brown, and Santos said the fraudsters were very specific in referencing and discussing actual council business and city programs to lure residents. Mayor Patrick Brown added that the attention to detail when creating the fake accounts made them almost indistinguishable from the real handles.

“In this case, there was a syndicate that (was using) a Facebook messaging system, where they would be sending messages from your Facebook Messenger without you knowing,” commented Brown. “They were literally targeting groups that would be interested in City of Brampton grants and asking them to provide a processing fee.”

 In an effort to reduce the likeliness of scams, the city staff is currently exploring ways to further secure social media accounts with the use of verification badges or third-party account monitoring systems.

However, currently, there is no way of preventing the scams from occurring.

“This effort by IT is to make sure we monitor to see if this is happening. We may not be able to protect against it, but knowing our residents can be defrauded, we shouldn’t have our eyes closed,” Brown said.

An easy way to stay safe on social media is to check the verification of official accounts. With growing cases of fraud, it is essential that we stay aware and constantly take precautionary actions to protect ourselves.