Classic scams like Nigerian princes in need of financial assistance and unexpected cruise tickets can seem childishly blatant, but they obscure an undercurrent of more threatening and manipulative exploitations. Over the summer, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police alerted people of an increase in fraudulent calls exploiting a duty so banal that citizens are often ignorant of its intricacies: Income tax returns.
Mary,* an international student at McGill University, was the victim of such a scam. Amid essay deadlines and caffeine-fueled sleep deprivation, she received a voicemail on Nov. 16. The call was from a Canadian number and the caller claimed to be an agent at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the government body that administers taxes nationally.
“The message said I was being investigated for tax evasion,” Mary said. “I’ve never had to file for taxes, but I thought it might’ve been a bureaucratic misunderstanding. Then [the agent] said there [was] a warrant out for my arrest, that they would come to the house in an hour, and if I didn’t pay the sum in total I would get arrested. So obviously I got extremely scared and I just couldn’t think clearly.”
The caller was quick to legitimize herself, providing Mary with a case number, transferring her to various superiors, and citing government legislation. She then concluded that Mary owed the CRA $4,200.83 and cited criminal charges to impose restrictions upon her.
“She set up this thing she called a protocol,” Mary said. “[…The] protocol basically had two rules. The first rule was [that] I could never hang up the phone […] because it would seem like I was evading the government. The second rule […] was that I couldn’t tell anyone that this was happening. She said if I told anyone what I was being investigated for or that I was under investigation, they would also be under investigation for collusion.”