A Toronto couple faces charges after supposedly defrauding hundreds of Canadians of millions of dollars.
The RCMP alleged in a press release on Thursday that the couple used technology to hide their telephone number to pose as bank employees, government or police and deceive people to deliver money.
Police said the suspects, who are 29 and 31, used a falsification website to make phone calls while showing false calls identification.
The RCMP claimed that the two people were among the “most active” subscribers to Ispoof.cc, a website that was used by subscribers around the world to make unauthorized phone calls while showing a call identification that falsely indicates that they were legitimate calls. The website had up to 38,000 subscribers.
“This particular technology allowed criminals to buy a subscription to use the service to impersonate reliable corporations,” RCMP said in the statement.
RCMP said they registered the couple’s house and confiscated a “treasure” of articles, including electronic devices.
Police said at least 570 people were fraud, although that number can increase after the devices seized in the search are analyzed.
According to the RCMP, the couple supposedly used a variety of different schemes of falsification, phishing and amordazos to attack their victims.
The couple has been accused of fraud, unauthorized use of a computer, washing the product of the crime, unauthorized possession of credit card data and possessing the product of the crime.
The defendants were arrested on Wednesday and sent to the Maplehurst Correctional Complex and the Vanier Center for Women and will appear remotely in a Toronto Court Chamber on February 21.
The falsification supposedly used in a ‘global scale’, says RCMP
Insp. Lina Dabit, the officer in charge of the Toronto Cyber Crime Crime investigation team for Ontario RCMP, said at a press conference on Thursday that RCMP officers arrested both after receiving information from the London Metropolitan Police in the The United Kingdom as part of Operation Elaborate, an investigation that involves several police forces.
The prepared operation was directed by the London Metropolitan Police with the help of the Dutch National Police and Europol.
The RCMP alleges that the two were using “global” falsification technology, said Dabit.
“The evidence indicates that the scale of its operation was huge,” Dabit said at a press conference on Thursday. “We claim that these people are responsible for millions of lost dollars for victims throughout Canada.”
“In addition, we suspect that almost all Canada banks have been victims of these suspects, as well as many of their customers.”
Dabit said cybercounts use falsification to deceive victims to convince them that they are talking to someone they can trust.
“This will often lead to victims who lower their guard and disseminate confidential information.”
Last year, the Canadians lost $ 638 million for fraud, according to the Canadian Anti-Franud center.
“These losses have had and continue to have devastating impacts on Canadian families who can finish losing a lifetime of savings,” Dabit said.
