Attention online scam artists: the mark responding to your “great investment offer” may be the chief of police.
Like a fisherman with time on his hands and a bite on the hook, West Vancouver Police Department Chief Len Goerke played with an online scam artist recently over a series of increasingly preposterous emails.
After a would-be fraudster purporting to represent a Russian investor willing to sink $50 million into Goerke’s company recently emailed him, the police chief decided clicking the spam button would be too easy.
“I get lots of these kind of emails,” Goerke said, explaining their abundance is evidence they’re likely working.
Writing under the name William T.F. Amor Decosmos, Goerke replied that after years of watching others have all the luck raising money, he was “overjoyed that it is FINALLY my turn.”
The second email assured Goerke – who hadn’t asked – that “we are not involved in terrorist act,” before requesting his name, address and investment plan, along with a “police clearance letter.”
By the fourth email Goerke was masquerading as a retiree with a dream to build a combination curling rink/donut shop. “Nobody sells donuts around here and many people love them,” he wrote.
“There’s a certain amount of satisfaction from just wasting a scammer’s time,” he said. “If a person is spending time trying to figure out how to get money out of me, they’re not spending time trying to figure out how to get money out of someone else.”
Despite a limited grasp of grammar and spelling on the part of the scammer, reading the emails was instructive, according to Goerke.
The scammer sent “faux, legal documents” in an attempt to appear legitimate.
“They’re really just about walking you down the road where eventually … what you give them is enough personal information that they can take money from you,” he said.
Canadians reported being cheated out of more than $37 million in 2014, according to the Canadian anti-fraud centre. The report recorded 7,334 Canadians who were defrauded through scam websites or emails.
Those are just “the tip of the iceberg,” Goerke said. “The vast majority of people who are victimized in this way don’t report it for a number of reasons including embarrassment.”
While he wanted to bring awareness to online fraud, Goerke had two words of advice for people who receive suspicious emails: “Just delete.”
Goerke borrowed his online handle from Amor De Cosmos, a former B.C. Premier who championed confederation.
