“Lucy” is barely able to contain her fear, even today. She has agreed to talk about what happened to her in exchange for concealing her identity. She is ashamed she was taken by a scam so easily, and worried her job in Toronto’s financial community will be jeopardized if her employer discovers how quickly she maxed out her three credit cards.

It took only four hours, and six trips to two different drugstores, to plunge $25,000 into the red — a debt she is still struggling to pay off.

“Yes, I have fear,” she said in an interview. “I thought if they come to work and cuff me … the people at work would know. In my life, we never do anything wrong. That’s why I’m so afraid.”

What created fear and panic in Lucy’s mind was a voice-mail message that has terrified tens of thousands of Canadians since 2013. Someone claiming to be from the Canada Revenue Agency typically says a fraudulent mistake has been discovered in back taxes, and the person needs to contact the tax department to rectify it immediately.

In recordings obtained by CTV’s W5, the voice mails went this way: “The issue at hand is extremely time-sensitive and very urgent. We have received legal notice against your name regarding tax fraud. The police department will approach you at your place with an arrest warrant.”

When Lucy received that message, she immediately called the number provided and spoke to a young man who identified himself as “Jason” at CRA and demanded she pay the alleged tax debt. He kept the pressure on, instructing Lucy to buy an ever-increasing number and value of iTunes cards over the next four hours, and provide him with the serial numbers on the back of them. At one point the voice on the other end of the phone threatened to reveal to police that Lucy was a terrorist if she didn’t comply.

“I didn’t think it was a scam,” Lucy said. “I thought that Revenue Canada is Revenue Canada.”

More at thestar.com:

Beware phony CRA tax owing calls: Roseman

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre in North Bay receives hundreds of complaints every week about calls like the one that targeted Lucy. According to Jeff Thompson, operational supervisor at the centre, who has heard many of them, the person making the call was clearly extorting the victims.

“There was a lot of fear in the victims,” Thompson said. “It was fear and panic they were trying to create. ‘You owe money, you’re going to be arrested, deported, fined, charged.’ They’re going to keep the victims on the phone. They’re going to direct them to the nearest store, the nearest money service business.”

Lucy didn’t have time to question the oddity of being told she needed to pay a tax debt by purchasing cards meant to download music and movies. She, like many older victims, didn’t know what iTunes cards were used for. She stopped agreeing to the demands from “Jason” only after she had maxed out her three credit cards and emptied her savings. She had no more money to hand over. She finally called her daughter and told her what had been happening that afternoon, and it was then she realized she had been had.

The so-called tax scam preyed on victims all over North America. The RCMP estimates that 50,000 Canadians have been victimized by callers claiming to be from the CRA and that millions of dollars have been sent out of the country through the scheme. And that’s only the people willing to admit they were extorted; police believe many others may be too ashamed to report it. The iTunes cards are only one way money was moved. Most of it, according to police, had a common destination: India.

Call centres are a huge business in India. According to Vijay Mukhi, managing director of a Mumbai computer institute, they employ about 10 million people in jobs that are coveted by young workers in particular. Chances are if you’ve called a computer help line here in Canada, your call has been forwarded to a legitimate call centre in India to provide IT assistance.

The wages by North American standards are paltry, but the steady income and the opportunity to practise English and flatten their accents makes call centre jobs a good landing place for those fresh out of school. Mukhi said there are no reliable estimates of how many call centres engage in illegal activity, but the draw for some people is a much better wage, usually paid in cash and under the table.

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“Here I am, 20, 21, 22, my first job. I never thought I’d get a job in my life; now I’m making a thousand times more every month than I ever thought I would,” Mukhi said, explaining how a young graduate might see this employment. “Now I’m telling myself I’m actually stealing from the rich and I hate the rich. You are making so much money, you’re spending so much money — why would you squeal? Why would you have a conscience? This is a dream you want to go on forever.”

The more Canadians who are called, the more commission the call centre workers earn for themselves. The higher the take, the more they pad their wallets.

W5 was able to connect one huge illegal operation in Thane, a suburb of Mumbai, to calls made to Canada, and tour the building where many of them were made.

In October 2016, the offices were raided and 83 people arrested and charged. There were more than 700 employees in the facility, which occupied several floors of a new building. There were also raids conducted in several other locations, but those call centres were able to shut down and remove their hard drives by the time Indian police discovered their connection to the Thane raid.

When W5 visited the Thane offices, we found row upon row of empty workstations, revealing the vastness of this criminal enterprise. At hundreds of desks, call centre employees would target and extort money from Canadian and American taxpayers. The scripts they used were left on their desks.

Shortly after the bust there was a dramatic reduction in CRA scam calls to Canada, which the RCMP believes was due to the Indian raids.

One young man who worked at the call centre and who was there the night of the raids agreed to speak only if his identity was concealed, because he hopes to find future employment. He has already spent 72 days in jail, charged with fraud, and is currently out on bail. “Raviv” had worked for several years in the legal call centre industry before answering an ad for a collection agency. He quickly realized after his training that it was a scam.

“I was actually going through a bad phase in my life,” Raviv said. “At the same time, I have a child and it so happened my wife got attacked with a disease. Making money totally depended on what kind of collection I did. If you were good enough, I would say incentives were marked to infinity how much you can earn.”

The police investigation is in its fifth month. It is the largest call centre criminal investigation an Indian police force has attempted, and it takes a lot of expertise to build a cybercrime case with little physical evidence. The other problem is that under Indian law, the victims of the crime have to be present in India to appear before a court. That means someone in Canada would have to be willing to pay their way to Thane, and endure a long court proceeding to be able to testify.

Lucy, in Toronto, no longer has the savings to allow her to travel anywhere. And while calls from victims to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre have fallen in recent months, new schemes are emerging. One of the more recent calls acknowledges to victims that fraudulent calls have been made, and then reassures them this isn’t one of them.

Some drugstores in Toronto have also posted warnings next to their iTunes card stands warning buyers against using them to pay for anything other than music.

With the CRA scam proving millions can be made deceiving and terrifying Canadians, the RCMP and Indian police agree those urgent voice-mail messages are likely to get more sophisticated and even more numerous over time.

W5’s investigation into the Indian tax scam, “Con Centre,” airs at 7 p.m. Saturday on CTV.

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