Reports of bitcoin scam in Belle River

Windsor, Ont. -

The owner of a Petro Canada on County Road 22 in Belle River says scammers claiming to be government agencies are targeting a specific demographic.

Armajit Singh says he’s dealt with multiple bitcoin scams in the past week.

“There’s five per cent that are conned and once the money is in the machine there’s no way of getting it back,” he says.

For the past four months, Singh has noticed more seniors using the bitcoin machine.

“I would say about 12 instances where seniors are being conned to send money through bitcoin to so called government agencies,” he says.

He recalls the three latest incidents.

“He told me he was buying a pickup truck for $5,000 and the deal was too good to pass on and he was told to send the money through bitcoin,” Singh says.

The second attempt was caught by another customer in the store.

“I said 'sir, they are scammers. This is what they do. They use iPhone cards, Apple phone cards, sometimes they use bitcoin. You need to go to OPP and report it,'” Montana recalls.

In this instance, the caller claimed to be RCMP.

“He went back and forth with RCMP all morning and he has to pay about $6,000 of bitcoin and he already gave $900 the day before,” says Singh.

The most recent and separate attempt was last Wednesday.

“His account was compromised by the bank and he had to send bitcoin back to the back and then they would refund it back to his account,” he said.

Singh advised the person not to buy any bitcoin and called Ontario Provincial Police to report the incident.

“When it involves crypto currently, bitcoin, those end users are very difficult to trace and track back through IP addresses,” says OPP constable Steven Duguay, who noted within the last year there has been a large increase in reports involving crypto currency fraud.

“They try to keep it hush, hush, thinking that they’re in trouble with the law. They don’t want their neighbours to know so they can’t tell anyone what’s going on,” he says.

Sing hopes this will raise awareness about the scale that appears to be targeting vulnerable people.

“Of course at this site I’ve instructed all my employees to be vigilant, who uses the machine,” he says.

Ontario Provincial Police say government agencies will not call or send emails regarding personal or financial matters.