You know you live in a multicultural city when...

[raincitygirl]

Every so often for the past few years, my cell phone gets called by a recorded voice claiming to be from the Canada Revenue Agency, I owe them a lot of money, and if I don't call the number in the recording right now, the RCMP will show up on my doorstep to arrest me for tax evasion.

(Hat tip for anybody who hasn't been paying attention: the phone number in the message does not really go to the CRA. These people are scammers)

Over the past month or two, though, i've also been getting calls from a recorded voice speaking what sounds like Chinese. And it sounds like the same message every time. I finally got a Cantonese-speaking colleague to listen to the message. She also speaks basic Mandarin, enough to say, "Oh, it's just this scam call that's been going around lately. It's telling you your visa has been cancelled and if you don't call the consulate right now and pay them, Immigration will show up on your doorstep to arrest you for being in Canada illegally. It's just a scam. It doesn't really go to the Chinese consulate, although I suspect they probably would take bribes. It just goes to scammers."

Apparently the CRA scammers are branching out into new languages and fields of scam.

Comments

[madripoor_rose]

We've gotten the American version of the IRS scam...but only in English.

What gets me is the ones that whirr quietly and hang up. Only thing I can figure is someone trying to send a fax.

[raincitygirl]

Points to Vancouver, Canada for having more multicultural scammers than the Midwest, USA, then! And we probably have better East Asian restaurants, to boot. But people can probably still afford to buy a place to live in the Midwest, which definitely isn’t the case in my neck of the woods.

My brother got a job in back-end-of-nowhere, the Prairies, and will be moving out there mid-to-late January. It’s a good job, I’m happy for him, but he’s going to have to learn to drive in the snow! And live without good Szechuan food, not to mention good Thai food and good sushi. Fortunately the back end of nowhere is only about an hour’s drive from a medium-sized city with 3 Starbucks, a multiplex, a WalMart, and various other signs of urban civilization.

The whirr and then hang up drives me batty too.

[madripoor_rose]

That is a trade-off. You can get a two story house with a big yard and maybe a pond for 200,000$, but you have to drive to Toledo or Detroit for food any more ethnic than Taco Bell. (tho there's usually one diner around where someone's kept their grandma's Pierogi or Paprikash recipe on the menu.)

Ugh. Driving in snow is the worst, especially when it's blowing sideways. But it just takes practice.

[jesuswasbatman]

That's spam calls that use robodiallers but humans to make the actual call. The diallers call more numbers than the humans can talk to, so the excess ones end up silent.

[madripoor_rose]

Hmm. Now, I've had calls that were dead silence, some that are click-n-hang up, or that distinctive sound of an empty line. This is a loud electronic CHHHHHHHRRRRR noise. Which is what made me think fax machine.

[shadowkat]

The Chinese scammers/robo-callers are big right now and across the US. I've gotten about twenty-thirty of these calls. I hang up? They leave a voice message. I block? They call via another spoofed number.

Go Chinese Robocalls are part of an international phone scam

And Chinese Robocalls Bombarding NY .

Annoying. Oh, and we get the IRS revenue scam.

[raincitygirl]

Oh goodie, here I was hoping it was a local headache. Alas, it’s hitting everywhere, from the sound of things.

[shadowkat]

Yep, the Chinese are going after our phones, while the Russians are attacking social media. Personally I think the Chinese need to step up their game plan...the Russians have clearly been more successful. The robocalls only work with Mandarin Speakers, the rest of us hang up.

[raincitygirl]

Heeeeee!!!!!

[dewline]

A lot of boiler rooms getting busted...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/theinvestigators/cra-scammers-tracked-down-covering-cannabis-the-investigators-with-diana-swain-1.4832182

https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/cra-scam-investigation-leads-to-major-police-raids-in-india-1.4885255

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-india-scam-1.4895202

[raincitygirl]

Ooh, interesting!