Question Period Note: COVID-19 Related Fraud

• In recent months, criminals have been exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic for financial gain, through a range of online fraud schemes aimed to deceive and spread misinformation among Canadians.

• In Canada, combatting fraud is a shared responsibility among law enforcement agencies, governments, and the private sector

• The RCMP, through the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and the National Cybercrime Coordination Unit, collects information on cybercrime, including online frauds and scams related to COVID-19 and shares that information with law enforcement agencies, private industry, and Canadians.

• The RCMP continues to work with domestic and foreign partners to address and investigate threats to the safety and security of Canadians, including COVID-19 related scams.

The CAFC is a dedicated center that collects information on mass marketing fraud and other scams impacting Canadians and disseminates that information to law enforcement agencies, private industry and the Canadian public. The CAFC works in concert with the National Cybercrime Coordination Unit (NC3), which was established to coordinate law enforcement cybercrime investigations across Canada and internationally.

Criminals have seized the opportunity to exploit uncertainty around the COVID-19 crisis by quickly adapting their operations and well-known fraud schemes to target individuals, businesses, corporations, and public organizations. This includes adapting various types of online fraud schemes. For instance, criminals have used the COVID-19 crisis to carry out a variety of social engineering attacks, such as phishing messages through spam campaigns and more targeted attempts such as business email compromise attacks and will continue to target an increasing number of victims and businesses to exploit fear, uncertainty, misinformation, and anxiety surrounding this global health pandemic.

As of June 10, 2020, the CAFC has received 1,250 reports linked to the COVID‐19 virus, with a total dollar loss of $1,873,548.61. The CAFC continues to see an increase in the number of online frauds related to the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, many types of scams are reported, including: merchandise, phishing, charity, survey, extortion, employment/financial aid, inheritance, emergency relief, and romance. Many of these scams cross provincial and international boundaries with a nexus to transnational organized crime (OC) groups. These OC groups will exploit any opportunity that creates vulnerabilities in the Canadian public as well as the integrity of Canadian institutions.

To address this threat, RCMP regularly engages law enforcement and private partners domestically and internationally to detect and deter OC activity. For example, the NC3 and CAFC have been working closely with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and other federal partners to disrupt COVID-19 cyber threats, such as working with the private sector to take down malicious websites. We can expect the emergence of new or adapted online fraud schemes with the potential of impacting individuals, businesses and the public sector as there is a greater chance for criminals to shift their traditional activities to online fraud in order to maintain or increase their profit, which has been reduced by isolation and travel restrictions. Increased anxiety and fear due to uncertainty around COVID-19 related health and economic risks creates vulnerability to exploitation by online fraud.

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