Late-night prank calls. Stolen campaign signs. Accusations of “Republican-style” propaganda.

Dirty tricks have made their way into the federal election campaign — and they are taking a toll.

On Tuesday, the Liberals issued a warning to Ontario residents about “harassing” phone calls they say are part of an “aggressive, unethical scheme organized and coordinated” by their political opponents.

Furious constituents in at least 10 ridings have complained about receiving rude phone calls from people claiming to be working for the local Liberal candidate. The calls, which contain a North Dakota “701” area code, often come repeatedly late at night or early in the morning.

“It’s a classic voter suppression technique,” said Joe Volpe, Liberal incumbent for Eglinton-Lawrence, where constituents have been receiving the calls for at least a week. “Only our political opponents would benefit from these incessant phone calls, a tactic taken straight from the Republican dirty-tricks playbook.”

Volpe, who has represented the riding since 1988, said many constituents have received as many as six phone calls in a row after 9 p.m., while some Jewish residents have been repeatedly harassed by calls on the Sabbath.

As well, he said constituents have ordered lawn signs from the bogus callers, only to wait weeks before realizing something was wrong when the signs failed to show up.

“What’s scary is that someone is using what would appear to be an American call centre to influence Canadian politics,” Volpe said, noting that his own office even received a phone call from the telemarketers last week.

A quick-thinking staffer quizzed the caller, who said they were from “Dynamics Research.”

On Tuesday, the Star contacted Dynamics Marketing, a call centre in Cooperstown, N.D., to ask if the company was doing work on behalf of any Canadian political party.

“We have never called for a political candidate in Canada, ever,” said Dynamics Marketing president Stacy Somerville. “We do not call into Canada.”

Somerville added that she has asked local authorities to look into who might be using her company’s name or a variation of it when making the prank calls.

“At this point, we’re at a loss. We don’t like being associated with this publicity,” she said.

Eglinton-Lawrence is one of Toronto’s more hotly contested ridings this time around. Volpe is facing his main competition from Conservative candidate Joe Oliver.

“All calls from our campaign are proudly identified as being on behalf of Joe Oliver and the Conservative Party of Canada,” an Oliver campaign worker told the Star, when asked if they knew anything about the prank calls. “We have no contract with any company in the U.S. to do calling on our behalf.”

Area resident Michael Cosgrove said he got one of the calls just before 5 p.m. on April 3.

“It was a young lady who said, ‘I’m calling on behalf of Joe Volpe and I was wondering if you will be supporting him,’” said Cosgrove, who has traditionally supported the NDP. When he told the woman he’d support Volpe this time around, she asked, “Can we put up a lawn sign?”

“I said I live in a condo and we have a policy against window signs, so it wouldn’t do much good,” Cosgrove said. “At that point she giggled and it sounded like there was someone else laughing in the background.”

“It was a very young voice. It’s not unusual to use younger volunteers.”

Cosgrove said he didn’t think anything of the call until he got a legitimate call from Volpe’s office. “I told them that they had already called me and asked why they were calling again.”

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Volpe said he has referred the matter to Elections Canada for review.

Ryan Sparrow, a national spokesman for the Conservative Party of Canada, reiterated Oliver’s position.

“These calls are not from local or federal conservative candidates or the party,” Sparrow said. “We had no knowledge of these calls until the Liberals started complaining about them. Maybe the Liberals are calling themselves.”

In Oakville, Liberal candidate Max Khan’s campaign office has also been plagued by reports of crank callers. Some Oakville residents have phoned to say that they’re getting calls at odd hours — even one at 3 a.m. — by people claiming to be Liberal organizers.

One prank call also came to Khan’s headquarters itself in the last week — the caller masking his voice in a mocking ethnic accent, asking for support for Ignatieff, said Khan’s campaign spokesman, John MacKay. That call seemed to be more aimed at ridicule of the candidate than campaign mischief, MacKay said.

So far, prank calls have been reported in the ridings of Saint Boniface (Manitoba), Hull-Aylmer (Quebec), Egmont (P.E.I.), St. Paul’s, Guelph, Simcoe Grey, Haldimand—Norfolk, Mississauga East—Cooksville, and Oakville.

Another riding in the GTA is also making news for its tightly contested race that allegedly prompted one party organizer to take drastic steps.

A Liberal campaign volunteer in Brampton West was arrested and charged last week with possession of stolen property after police allegedly found several lawn signs belonging to the Conservative candidate in the back of his truck.

Brampton resident Rachpal Grewal, 47, will appear in court May 12.

That wasn’t the first time election signs became targets.

Earlier this month, Ryan Keon, the Liberal candidate in Nepean-Carleton awoke one morning to find more than 100 of his signs vandalized with spray-painted rifle-targets over the picture of his face.

With files from Richard J. Brennan and Susan Delacourt