Don’t let your desire for a shiny new smartphone lead you to buying a dummy phone, the North Vancouver RCMP is warning.
Since the start of the year, police have seized 15 sophisticated but fake phones sold to local victims.
In each case, the victims were connected online with someone purporting to be reselling a name brand phone at a below-market price, according to Sgt. Doug Trousdell, North Vancouver RCMP spokesman. The suspect would offer the victims a believable story as to why they were reselling it and come meet them to close the deal.
Even after inspecting the product, the victims would have little chance to know they were being had, Trousdell said. The fakes have been shrink wrapped in what appears to be authentic packaging, complete with a bar code from a local business and matching receipt. Inside the box, the fake phone comes with apparently real components, accessories and manuals. The ruse continues right up until the time the phone is turned on.
“But they’re dummy phones. They don’t work. There’s enough electronics in there to take the home screen and make it look like it’s a real phone but when you start actually opening apps… you realize nothing works,” Trousdell said. “It would fool me, for sure. I wasn’t aware of these devices until I saw them in this investigation. I could absolutely see someone being fooled by them.”
Although it wasn’t the case with any of the local phones seized, fraudsters have also been known to resell real smartphones preloaded with malicious software that steals the user’s sensitive personal information.
“You don’t have to be naïve to fall for these ones. These are clever scams,” Trousdell said.
And, just as smartphone producers invest heavily in their next generation of products, so too do scammers, Trousdell warned.
“The next generation of these might be that much more sophisticated and still be fraudulent.”
Because of the relatively high risk of scams and little ability for victims to verify what they are buying, Trosudell said the RCMP only recommend buying phones from known and reputable stores.
As for the suspects selling the phones here, North Vancouver RCMP say they are actively investigating the case.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll get somewhere,” Trousdell said.
