'I fell for it once': Seminar teaches seniors to protect themselves against scams
Each year, tens of thousands of Canadian seniors are scammed out of their savings by fraudsters. On Wednesday, a free workshop took place at Yakimovich Wellness Centre in Victoria to educate seniors on how to protect themselves.
Ellen Stensholt, 82, attended that seminar. She has been the target of a seniors scam in the past.
“I fell for it once, but was saved by my bank,” said Stensholt.
A scammer posed as ICBC, telling her she was bout to receive a $100 rebate.
“I was going to send them my banking information so that they could deposit the money into my account,” said Stensholt.
Fortunately, her bank recognized it was a scam and alerted her before it was too late.
Stensholt was one of more than 20 seniors attending the two-hour seminar.
“Every day I think we get reports,” said Const. Berle Zwaan of the Saanich Police Department.
Zwaan has been a police officer in Saanich for 28 years. As of late her career has focused on financial crimes and fraud prevention.
She says all types of scams are on the rise across the country.
“Residents in Saanich have reported about $7.7 million in losses to the police alone,” said Zwaan.
That was just last year. Only $155,000 of that was recovered due to the fact that the money often ends up overseas.
Many of those scams including phishing emails, phone calls and the ever-increasing grandparent scam that targets seniors.
“We know that seniors are home, we know that they have access to technology and they are fairly well-off here in North America,” said the Saanich police officer—which makes Canada a prime target for scammers.
Zwaan says there are four things seniors can do to protect themselves:
- Slow down and don’t rush into any decisions
- Ask yourself if what you are being presented with makes sense
- Talk to a trusted friend, family member, bank or lawyer before acting
- Do your own research.
The seminar is a partnership between the Saanich Police Department, Target Theatre and the Eldercare Foundation, which supports seniors to age with dignity.
“One of the key programs that Eldercare supports is education,” said Tom Arnold, executive director of the Eldercare Foundation. “Obviously one of the key issues right now is fraud, so it’s really important for us to provide that information to seniors to help keep them safe.”
“We just have to protect ourselves,” said Stensholt.
Being almost taken once, Stensholt says every week some sort of scam comes her way and that is why she attended the seminar: to educate herself.
“What I hope to know, what are the new scams,” said Stensholt.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Drive one of these vehicles? You may pay 37 per cent more than average insurance costs due to thefts
As the number of auto theft incidents rises in Canada, so have insurance premiums for drivers, even the ones whose vehicles aren't stolen.
'I'm not wealthy': Ontario senior shocked she owes $40,000 in capital gains after gifting land
An Ontario senior who wanted to help her daughter and grandson eventually own homes one day decided to give them two lots on her property as a gift—but she didn’t know it would eventually cost her tens of thousands of dollars.
NDP want Liberals to scrap proposed election date change that could secure pensions for many MPs
The federal New Democrats want to amend the Liberal government's electoral reform legislation to scrap the proposal to push back the vote by a week and consequently secure pensions for dozens of MPs, CTV News has learned.
Israel's war cabinet minister moves to dissolve parliament: statement
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz's centrist party has proposed holding a vote to dissolve parliament in a bid to bring about an early election, his party said in a statement on Thursday.
DEVELOPING BMO clients face outages in Canada, U.S. following data centre fire alarm
Bank of Montreal clients on both sides of the border Thursday morning have reported outages with banking services. BMO said its technical team is investigating.
Exorbitant fees get Gazans out with no help from Ottawa
The comforting sound of giggling grandchildren has chased away the cloud of anxiety that has loomed over Mohammed and Intisar Nofal's home for the past seven months.
Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C., begins RBC Canadian Open defence
Nick Taylor begins the defence of his RBC Canadian Open title this morning.
B.C. mortgage broker ran $270-million Ponzi scheme, then fled Canada, bankruptcy trustee says
The trustee appointed to manage the bankruptcies of a Victoria mortgage company and its owner has concluded that they committed "numerous offences" and operated as a "massive Ponzi scheme."
Want to turn off Meta AI? You can't - but there are some workarounds
If you use Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram, you've probably noticed a new character pop up answering search queries or eagerly offering tidbits of information in your feeds, with varying degrees of accuracy.