N.S. woman refused to comply with phone scammer, so would-be fraudster swatted her house
A Truro-area woman says she is shaken and terrified after a would-be fraudster sent heavily armed police from two different departments to her home over the weekend.
'There's so many things that could have gone badly wrong,' says Lynn Clark Colpitts
Preston Mulligan · CBC News
·
Listen to this article
Estimated 5 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
A Truro-area woman says she is shaken and terrified after a would-be fraudster sent heavily armed police from two different departments to her home over the weekend.
The original call seemed like a routine phone scam. A woman claiming to be from the CIBC fraud department called Lynn Clark Colpitts and said someone had applied for a credit card in her name. In order to block it, she advised Clark Colpitts to download an app called CIBC Guard.
Colpitts said she didn’t feel comfortable doing that or sharing any information over the phone. While she was on the call she conferenced her IT expert from work into the call who told her to do nothing until she contacted her branch.
"I told her politely, I said I'm sorry I have to go by what my IT guy told me to do. And then she used some profanity toward me,” Clark Colpitts said.
“She called me a f-----g b---h, twice, and then hung up on me.”
Clark Colpitts figured she’d dodged a scam but 20 minutes later things escalated.
'She was threatening me the whole time'
“She calls me back and says, ‘I've got a surprise for you. Go to your front door. There's a surprise waiting for you there.’ And I'm like, ‘What are you talking about?’"
Sure enough, as she stepped onto her porch she saw heavily armed officers from the Colchester District RCMP and Truro Police in her yard and on the street.
“They holler at me and ask me who I am,” Clark Colpitts said. “And I tell them who I am and they tell me to get down to the end of the driveway.”
Several officers entered her home while Clark Colpitts tried to explain there was no such threat. While police checked on the property the fraudster kept up the phone calls to Clark Colpitts. She held it up so police could hear it.
“She was threatening me the whole time saying that she wasn't done with me and that this was gonna keep going on.”
RCMP explained to Clark Colpitts that they’d gotten a call about a hostage taking — and shooting — at her address.
Calls, emails and death threats
“It appears to be a level of retribution by the fraudsters in this case,” said Staff Sgt. Mark Rose, commander of the Colchester District RCMP.
“[It appears] they did this to cause her harm and pain and distress by having the police respond to her residence all because she didn’t follow the original instructions on the phone."
The calls from the female fraudster continued on Friday and into Saturday.
Staff Sgt. Mark Rose is the commander of the Colchester District RCMP. (Galen McRae/CBC)
“She just kept going on and on and on. It was relentless," Clark Colpitts said.
And there were emails too. Death threats.
Clark Colpitts is a realtor. She got a phone call from a coworker who said someone had hacked into their agency’s website, took down Clark Colpitts's photograph and replaced it with what Clark Colpitts says was a “deformed animal.” All of it has left her scared to be in her own home.
Swatting attack
David Shipley, CEO and co-founder of Beauceron Security, which is based in Fredericton, says Canadians have lost tens of millions of dollars to phone scams, but this is the first time he’s aware of it escalating into a “swatting” attack. That’s when a person calls police to someone’s property to report a crime or emergency that is entirely fiction.
“This seems like a criminal who was definitely not having a good day and decided to dramatically escalate the dangerousness and seriousness of this situation,” Shipley said.
“I would argue that this is a form of terrorism,” he said. “Canadians aren't used to having the SWAT team from the police department show up with assault rifles and body armour and riot shields to their front door. That's incredibly, incredibly traumatic.”
Rose said police have to take these calls at face value and deliver the appropriate response.
“We've offered victim support services to [Clark Colpitts] and we are working with our law enforcement partners in other countries — and in Canada — to determine if this connects to other offences and try to determine who's responsible for this.”
CIBC told CBC News in a statement that there is no app called "CIBC Guard" and that it would never contact customers requesting personal or financial information, or request you download an app. It urged people to be extremely cautious when dealing with unsolicited emails, texts or phone calls, and not to rely on caller ID.
The bank said it's actively working to educate clients about impersonation and other scams, and it urges people to contact 911 if there is an urgent threat to their safety or the safety of others.
Meanwhile Clark Colpitts says she's traumatized.
“There's so many things that could have gone badly wrong.”
MORE TOP STORIES
Video
Rare disease traced back to Nova Scotia's Black Loyalists
Video
NSCC pauses professional photography program
Lobster dealer granted bail, ordered to stay out of Digby County
N.S. government still working to restore websites affected by programming vulnerability
No offshore wind call for bids until consultation with Mi’kmaq is complete: regulator
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Preston Mulligan has been a reporter in the Maritimes for more than 20 years. Along with his reporting gig, he also hosts CBC Radio's Sunday phone-in show, Maritime Connection.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.