Saint John police issued a warning to residents this week after a rash of cryptocurrency scams in the city.
A release issued by the police force says they’ve responded to “at least five separate occurrences” of cryptocurrency-related scams since the beginning of May that caused “tens of thousands of dollars in losses.”
According to provincial RCMP, the problem is happening all over New Brunswick, and it is getting worse.
“We have to be vigilant with who calls us and who’s soliciting stuff from us online,” said Cpl. Hans Ouellette of New Brunswick RCMP.
“But we also have to be really conscious of some of our most vulnerable populations — maybe our youth, who are not used to getting these types of calls or dealing with financial institutions, and also our elderly. We need to speak to them about these types of things.”
According to New Brunswick RCMP’s annual report from 2020, the force answered 3,756 calls for fraud within their provincial jurisdiction, up 40.99 per cent from the year before.
And that doesn’t account for cities like Saint John or Fredericton, which are policed by their own force.
READ MORE: Ontario couple lost more than $370K in crypto scam, police say
Some of the most common iterations of these scams involve scammers calling people, pretending to be their financial institution, the Canada Revenue Agency or even the police.
