Peterborough Police say they continue to receive numerous phone calls from local residents reporting the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) fraud.
These scams may insist that this personal information is needed so that the taxpayer can receive a refund or a benefit payment according to police.
Police say taxpayers need to be alert when receiving, either by telephone, mail, text message or email, a fraudulent communication that claims to be from the CRA requesting personal information such as a social insurance number, credit card number, bank account number, or passport number.
Sometimes the fraudsters use threatening or coercive language to scare individuals into paying fictitious debt to the CRA. There have been incidents of scammers pretending to be police officers and threatening arrest. Don’t fall for it.
Other communications allegedly urge taxpayers to visit a fake CRA website where the taxpayer is then asked to verify their identity by entering personal information.
These are scams and you should never respond or click on any of the links provided.
The CRA will not do the following:
- Send email with a link and ask you to divulge personal or financial information (exception: If you call the CRA to request a form or a link for specific information, a CRA agent will forward the information you are requesting to your email during the telephone call. This is the only circumstance in which the CRA will send an email containing links).
- Ask for personal information of any kind by email or text message.
- Request payments by prepaid credit cards.
- Give taxpayer information to another person, unless formal authorization is provided by the taxpayer.
- Leave personal information on an answering machine.
If you receive a call saying you owe money to the CRA, you can call the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre or check CRA’s My Account  at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/myaccount/ to be sure.
