Fraud – Public Awareness

File: 202039180 – Jan 9, 2020

Charlottetown Police Services received a complaint of a fraud attempt involving a local Charlottetown business.  Police are alerting businesses of this scam as a means of prevention.

The fraud is known as “CEO fraud”, “Wire fraud” or “business executive scam”.  In this particular case, an employee of a local business received an email from an executive of the company (correct name on the email, but upon closer examination, the email address was altered and not from the legitimate sender).  The email instructed the employee that a financial transaction was required and a large sum of money needed to be wired.  In this case, the scam was detected before any funds were disbursed.

A sure way to prevent this type of scam/fraud is to always confirm the transaction by phone or in person with the originator of the email.

This type of scam is not overly common, with Charlottetown Police Services having received approximately 3 such reports in 2019.