Scammer calls off duty cop and gets a response he never expected

Phone scammers are constantly trying to come up with new ways to get people to give up their money. They prey on the elderly, the gullible, the fearful, and anyone naive enough to believe them. They are the lowest of the low. A popular ruse over the past few years has been the CRA scam. The CRA is the Canada Revenue Agency, which is the Canadian equivalent of the IRS. The plot is always the same and the caller is authoritative and threatening. He leaves a message that tells the victim that they have committed tax fraud and that they have failed to declare income. They have reported the matter to the police authorities and an arrest warrant has been issued. The caller identifies himself as an officer who is sending the local police to drag the offender off to jail. Surprisingly, a substantial percentage of people actually fall for the scam and they pay the caller the amount that they believe they owe the government. Conveniently, this payment can be made through iTunes, or similar internationally recognized currency.

What this scammer doesn’t realize is that he has left a message at the home of “Dave”, a police officer, who has actually received many complaints about this scam and spends a good part of his week at work warning people about similar ploys. Dave decided to return the call and have a little fun with the pretend officer at the other end. He ended up speaking to “Officer Johns” of the Toronto Police. The officer told Dave not to interrupt and then he explained the alleged fraud for $2399. Much of the long-winded allegation has been edited out to shorten this video, but we can hear that Officer Johns was sending the Millbrook RCMP and the local sheriff to handcuff Dave. He doesn’t understand that there is no such thing as a Sheriff of Millbrook, or even the Millbrook RCMP. If anyone was going to arrest Dave at his home, the call would actually have come through the dispatchers of the Ontario Provincial Police and one of Dave’s coworkers would have been sent to do it.

Dave pleaded with the fraudster, asking if he could explain his story to the police, but he was told that there would be no listening and no mercy. There would only be a prompt and unfriendly arrest. Being very confident that nobody was actually coming to arrest him, Dave took the stapler from his desk and began opening and closing it, imitating the racking action of a shot gun. Trying to sound like a desperate man who has run out of options, he declared that he would blast anyone who came to take him away because he “was not going to jail”. The fraudster left Dave with one last threat that the police were on the way and then he hung up. It seems obvious that he realized he had pushed Dave over the edge of reason.

If you get a call from anyone who asks for money, phone your local police to verify that it’s legitimate. In almost all cases, it’s a scam.