Phone scam sounded ‘too good to be true’: Okotoks resident

An accountant from Okotoks has a warning for Albertans about a new cell phone scam pretending to be from STARS Air Ambulance.

Brian Fea says he got a call last Thursday, Oct. 31, telling him he was the winner of a draw for $500,000.

As someone who likes to buy tickets, he says he was interested, but realized the prizes are usually handed out at the end of March, not in mid-November.

“That’s one of those too-good-to-be-true calls,” said Fea.  “Your antenna goes up already.”

Fea says the caller asked him if he had a pen and paper so they could exchange the winning number, contact names and numbers and other information.

That’s when he noticed the caller ID on the phone was spelled S-T-A-R-Z, instead of ending with an ‘S’.

Then the caller asked for his banking information so he could provide it to Revenue Canada.

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“He said the prize check is from RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) and he wanted to know what banking institution I deal with,” said Fea.

“He’s trying to convince me that this has to be registered with CRA and that it costs $400. to do the registration and he wanted me to give him a Paypal account or credit card account to make this payment,” adds Fea.

“I said there is no way I’m giving you a credit card number over the phone — and ‘click’ — he hung up right away.”

Half an hour later Fea says he got a similar call from the same guy on his office phone line downstairs.

“They are really trying to catch you off guard and before you know it you’ve given out information that you shouldn’t, so you really need to be careful,” says Fea.

When contacted by Global News about the scam, STARS Air Ambulance says the organization and its popular lottery have been used by scammers for years, with an increase usually around the holiday season.

STARS says while they do contact some of their grand prize winners by phone, they would never ask for sensitive information like banking — and certainly would not ask for money — for someone to claim a prize.

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