Visa scams

The CRA scam ripped Canadians off of more than $5 million last year, but that number could just be the tip of the iceberg.

The Hamilton police major fraud unit thinks scammers made away with a lot more than that last year because many victims were too embarrassed to report it.

Now a couple of new scams are making the rounds.

Two days ago someone called 76 year old Florence and offered her a deal that was pretty enticing.

“He said that you’ve qualified for 1% off every purchase with your Visa or Mastercard.”

The caller had a lot of her information, name, address and even her credit card number but they needed a bit more.

“Then he said if you’ll just give me the expiration date and the three numbers on the back I’ll send you out these papers, then I said if you’ve got that much information you should have this.”

Florence told the caller that she was going to check with her credit card company. She hung up and called Visa and was told they’d never call her with an offer.

We spoke to another woman that said someone called her at 5:30 in the morning calming to be from Visa. They told her that her credit card was used to send money to India. They asked her for the expiry date and the number on the back of the card so they could cancel the transaction, luckily she figured out it was a scam.

Visa customer service says that Visa would cover any fraudulent transactions on your card that you didn’t approve, but if you are asked to buy bitcoin or in some cases iTunes gift cards, you won’t get your money back.