On Wednesday afternoon, I received a call from a gentleman in the western United States who was doing some due diligence into a business deal. He had been contacted by someone using a variant of my company’s name, who informed him that he was in line to inherit $7.5M.
The scam artist claimed to be a lawyer, acting as an agent for a client of National Bank in Brampton and he forwarded a letter from an account manager at the bank named Dr Smith Allen.
The phone numbers don’t match the real numbers for the bank. The law firm doesn’t exist, the lawyer doesn’t show up in the registry at the Law Society of Upper Canada and the lawyer used two similar but different street addresses; I guess it is tough to keep the storyline straight when you are making it up as you go.
Usually, these types of letters are traced to Nigeria or other far off lands. Maybe it is a sign of the slipping economy that our call centres are being re-purposed to target seniors in the US.
This message is a public service announcement to help people doing a web search for “Goldberg”, “National Bank”, “Canada”. It is a scam. And I’m not involved.
I filed a report with Phone Busters using their toll free line (+1.888.495.8501). Cathy is on the case.
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National Bank, inheritance