Friday Night Kept Police Busy

THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay Police have had a fairly busy weekend.

Officers responded to 51 Quality of Life calls, including 36 alcohol related calls.

There were two weapons offenses responded to by officers. As well there were two sexual assaults and nine assaults.

Saturday night will see the arrival of a ‘Super Moon’. Now there are debates over the impact of a full moon on crime and incidents that police respond to.

If it sounds too good to be true

Thunder Bay Police state:

In the past few weeks the Thunder Bay Police have spoken to numerous citizens who have attend the Police Station to report receiving possible fraudulent letters in the mail. Thankfully these people did not act on these letters or they could have been a victim of a fraud!

These letters are supposedly from an accountant who is sending you correspondence as the accountant of some person who has died along with all of his family members and has left behind millions of dollars. Of course no direct family members can be located and because he amazingly enough has the same last name as you….you may be able to get a portion of that inheritance!

Oh did I mention that the transaction is 100% risk free and legal and that you will not have to take a DNA blood test or go to court? The instructions also ask you to confirm via email or fax if you are willing to “collaborate” with them. And remember do not correspond by mail for security reasons!

As you can probably surmise from my sarcasm, these letters are totally bogus, fraudulent, a scam or whatever terms you want to use. This is just the starting point for fraudster to lead gullible, naïve, foolish, impulsive and most likely greedy people to continue on the quest to become wealthy.

Police will not follow up on most of these scams for a few reasons:

1. Most organized crime groups are based overseas creating logistical issues, jurisdiction issues and legal complications not to mention the potential enormous financial cost. Keep in mind laws are different in every country so it becomes very difficult if not impossible to investigate these types of crimes.

2. Lack of resources to deal with the sheer number of frauds that are occurring due to that wonderful thing we call the internet. It has become the fraud criminal’s best fishing hole EVER!

So what should you do if you get a similar type letter, email or phone call? Ignore it like any other piece of junk mail you get. Just because they have your name, address, email address or phone number don’t panic……most of this information is published somewhere and they have just accessed that particular piece of your personal information. The fraudster/criminal is contacting you to get you to communicate with them so they can get the pieces they really need to commit a fraud or to have you send them some upfront money to allow them to send you millions of dollars.

Remember the old sayings “If it too good to be true, it usually is!” and ” When in doubt – Don’t!” These are wise words to live by.

If you want to become familiar with what frauds are going on and affecting Canadians go to www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca. You may also report your incident to the government so they can update their data base. You may report your incident by phone or online. The website is very user friendly.

Should you ever be concerned that your personal information has been accessed and you may be a victim of identity theft, we recommend that you conduct regular credit checks to see who has been making credit inquiries about you. You may go to www.equifax.ca or www.transunion.ca for more information.

Remember that most people (99.999999%) are not just lucky enough to have money from an unknown source given to them for no reason. I hate to tell you this but you are not that special, no matter what anyone says. If you do not have a rich relative that you have actually met or know the person contacting you, you have not worked to earn the money or you have not purchased the winning lottery ticket……….you will just have to get up tomorrow and head to work and life will continue status quo!