‘Even I got sucked in’

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This article was published 23/02/2024 (603 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Barry Tuckett was an expert on privacy and access matters during the nine years he was Manitoba’s ombudsman — but even he got fooled recently when he unwittingly gave information to a scammer.

While the scammer didn’t get enough information to steal any money from Tuckett, he was able to get cellphone numbers belonging to both Tuckett and his wife, and convince Bell MTS to shut them down because he was armed with information from Tuckett’s account.

“How is that even possible?” Tuckett said on Friday.

“This should be a message to everyone. I’m not that stupid, but I still got caught by this.”

Last week, retiree Tuckett, who was ombudsman from 1994 to 2005, got a call on his landline from a person who claimed to be a Bell MTS employee. The caller offered a discount of 40 per cent.

Tuckett said he was pretty sure it was a scam but decided to play along to get more information that he could provide to Bell MTS to tip off the company about the scam.

“I asked him to email me some information, which he did,” he said.

“He sent me an email which had my Bell number with it. I know I never responded to the email, but when he phoned back he may have asked me to confirm the number. I’m not positive, but I may have recited the number back.

“I don’t know how, but that must have been how they did it.”

Tuckett said the person kept calling his home phone to try to get him to divulge further information.

“I finally called him out and told him to stop calling,” he said.

“He threatened to cut off all ‘My Bell’ services if I did not take their offer. Laughable, I thought, and I told him so. He hung up saying our service would be discontinued.”

The next day, when Tuckett reached for his cellphone, it said “no service available.” Then he found the same message on his wife’s cellphone.

“I thought ‘the son of a gun.’ They said they were going to do it and they did it. But how did they do it?”

Every year, thousands of Canadians are victimized by scammers, often from other countries, via telephone or computer.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported there were 41,111 victims in Canada last year, who lost a total of $554 million. The centre said there were also 62,365 reports of fraud across the country last year.

A Winnipeg senior told the Free Press this week he’d received a call offering a 40 per cent discount from a person claiming to be with Bell MTS, but hung up as soon as he realized it was a scam.

Bell MTS spokeswoman Morgan Shipley said in Tuckett’s case “the malicious actor had the customer’s ‘My Bell’ credentials.”

Shipley said while she didn’t know how the scammer would have got that information, online accounts can be “compromised in a variety of ways such as phishing campaigns, social engineering, password re-use across accounts or other methods.”

She said this allowed the “malicious actor” to use Tuckett’s account to send a verification code to him and by reading the code out to the scammer, that was all they needed to cause further harm by processing a transaction in his account.

Shipley said the company has been in contact with Tuckett to ensure his accounts are secure.

“Digital fraud continues to be on the rise, with new and ongoing scams targeting the telecom, utility, banking, and retail industries across the country,” she said.

“To make sure you’re dealing with Bell, customers should always contact us directly.”

As for Tuckett, he was able to regain the use of his cellphone on the same day, although he first had to convince an actual Bell MTS employee he was the real customer.

“I guess what I’ve learned from all of this is if you think you’re smarter than them, you’re not,” he said.

“I should be smart enough, but even I got sucked in.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca