Johnson family to be refunded money lost in fraud

Members of a farm family from Saskatchewan who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a case of stolen identity received a call from their bank Wednesday.

They’ll be getting all of their money back.

Andrew and Laurie Johnson were relieved to hear the news and now they want to help prevent this situation from happening to someone else.

The Johnsons first noticed something was up when one of their cellphones was ported from SaskTel to a Telus account — a request they did not make.

SaskTel’s Greg Jacobs says their identity would have had to have been stolen to be able to port to another carrier.

Fraudsters acquire personal information about their target, then impersonate them to set up a wireless account with an alternate wireless service provider.

“Generally speaking, the criminal needs to have key pieces of personal information before they can port a number out. How they come about that, there’s any number of ways.”

Jacobs says there are some things people can do to protect themselves.

“For a lot of wireless service providers, you can add additional protection on your account in the form of a PIN, so in order to access your account you’re required to provide a pin or a password,” Jacobs explained.

He also suggests getting rid of your birth date on social media.

“To be fair, the birth date isn’t the golden source and it isn’t the only one that you could use to acquire (someone’s identity). If you have someone’s birthday, and that’s it, you’re not going to be able to get any farther than that but it is one of the pieces.”

He says at any given time several scams designed to acquire personal information are happening around the world.

“Email scams known as phishing, text message scams, telemarketing scams. Through those types of scams, if you’re clicking on links you’re not aware of, they could be acquiring personal information that way, link banking information and other sensitive information,” he told 650 CKOM.

SaskTel is investigating the Johnson family case to see how it can further protect customers.