Invite: Better to be Aware before than find out after a Loss.
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I am preparing this document as a reminder to myself, a reference to various account providers, a cautionary example to friends and associates, and an expose of how technical and complex present day (2025) fraudsters have become, together with a warning that they will only continue to improve their communications to deceive and manipulate yourself and others. Better to AVOID than to have to spend long hours making an effort to correct it.
We each can weaken ourselves to theft and fraud by assuming or taking on attitudes and dynamics which lower or eliminate our required defenses against those desperate or greedy enough to utilize our ethical biases and distractions against our thoughtful and careful considerations. Next, are a few of these which cloaked mine in this instance and how anyone could raise protections against them.
PRIVACY:
ALL Personal details, including account numbers, will have been revised and changed to prevent, correct, and/or remove the potential for a fraud-scam to continue or be repeated. Contact details including names and phone numbers with legitimate services and hosts remain accurate to enable you to reach them, when relevant, and to provide a low cost promotion for them. Additional details and cautions may be added as they become available.
Reality: What we always carry with us. Know your Limits.
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EXPERIENCE: In 2023, years previous, I had detected what I considered was an attempt to use my then CIBC credit card in a fraudulent transaction. I had detected the possible danger BEFORE any transaction had occurred. I found it relatively straightforward in the detecting and correcting, although the measures advised to be taken by CIBC and Amazon proved to be dramatic and long in effort and changes. I was not long on the phone with the agents at CIBC and Amazon. Essentially, I was to change my credit card and convenience card, passwords, and update my suppliers of services and products whom I made online payments to. Since, and even before, I rarely answered phone calls from numbers or e-mail addresses I was unfamiliar with. Simple and straightforward fraud-like efforts were received almost daily. Rejecting them seemed to be easy and almost automatic. Times change and Desperate person in our societies continue to increase in number and sophistication (technical tools and communication strategies).
NAIEVITY: I believed in the background reality of my identity that I would make a poor fraud target (mark).
I have few assets left, no savings, and no planned or expected large and unusual arrivals of income.
My retirement income (pension) is neither large nor expected to increase substantially in the future.
Yet, I am not homeless nor own known precious objects nor carry debt .. which indicates that I at least have enough income to pay my basic expenses, and likely have a good credit score. Fraudsters can and do build on these particulars by lodging loans with your identity, buying items and having them "shipped to and delivered to themselves" which they can SELL for currency. The more Desperate are only interested in finding someone they can defraud $700 or more from, once. Others, with more patience and skill may exercise a greater degree of selection. There are few persons, excepting those who are without Internet access (even temporary), no credit card or bank account .. who are unlikely to be targeted.
DISTRACTION: At the time of day of my involvement I was active doing 2 laundries which would require drying, folding, and putting away to selected locations. I had been critically ill for almost 9 years leaving me too disabled to have a steady dependable job and income, and, increasingly dependent upon my completing daily living requirements (I live alone) and preferences including personal bookkeeping and accounting, food acquisition and preparation, utilizing medical devices, and, cleansing and medical routines. In addition, the side effects of some persistent illnesses have increasingly left me weak, exhausted, and tired for much of the day. These all take focus, planning, effort, and awareness of changes and their need. Answering the phone can seem to provide a minimal degree of social contact. In the past 18 months, I have been limited in my verbal communication to 10 or 20 minutes at a time. That limitation FAILED here as I made an effort to focus and resolve this suspected terrible problem of already having been hacked in as few minutes as possible.
HEALTH: How one earns, saves, and spends one's money is often an extension of how they cope with their health. I am a poor fraud target in that due to disabilities from my health I have a low earning capacity and record in recent years, a lack of social participation and membership and activities fees and entertainment-spectator expenses together with no ownership or rental charges connected with transportation. That means I have no option for the sale of, purchase of, or financing of a vehicle and no one with my identity would either. This again encouraged me to perceive a lessened Risk of being defrauded. The exception, often real, is that the defrauder, if desperate enough, is only concerned in whether you have assets and/or a credit they can debit, transfer from, or borrow against.
These are potentially MAJOR weaknesses that apply to me directly, and whose context may endanger YOU to a much greater degree.
In REVIEW, a good caution against Fraud may be to never trust ANYONE you are not face-to-face with or know personally and do NOT follow their instructions, especially if they are rushing you and asking YOU to Trust THEM. In addition I would caution against you believing ANY documentation they offer to share with you about THEIR identity. When I questioned HIS identity, he was QUICK to provide me with a suggested Amazon employee number, the spelling of his full name, and a webpage which provided a possible extensive Profile of himself including education (courses and degrees) and employee history, company background paragraph, list of Colleagues, workplace address and contact details, and a Frequently Asked Questions section regarding himself.
On REVIEW, these details could have been lifted from real documentation relevant for OTHER people, or, projected as imaginary possibilities from similar documents.
Flooded: Information overload to Capture You.
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FRAUD EXPERIENCE from 3 PM, Alberta Mountain time to 4 PM --- Friday, September 5, 2025
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This is the detail regarding a Global Transfer Fraud I, John R. Sennett was involved in on Friday, September 05, 2025 beginning at 3 PM, Mountain Time.
On answering the call, from 250-535-5431, (a number seemingly local to my own number and exchange) the caller informed me that he was a Security Agent with Amazon.com and that he believed my Amazon account had been compromised by a suspicious debit for an item unusual to by buying habits.
He identified himself as ANTHONY SICKICH with an Amazon Employee number of 1518616100
At 3.35, I received an e-mail to applesauce.net informing me that ...
Your MoneyGram reference number for Transaction ID 524817255102 is ready:
62387614
Please give this number to your beneficiary maria aurora leon gualan for cash pick of 1,387.72 USD at any approved MoneyGram agent in ECUADOR. Your beneficiary has 14 days to pick up the cash or the funds will be returned to you.
For a list of approved MoneyGram locations, please visit
MoneyGram location finder
http://global.moneygram.com/en/en-locator
Thank you for choosing CIBC Global Money Transfer
I did NOT respond to this e-mail or another one that apparently came from CIBC directly and asked for me to enter a PIN authorizing a transfer.
In REVIEW, If a stranger is offering to HELP you avoid a disaster or assist you in recovering something, and you do not know them personally ... take a moment to pull back and consider. Are you paying them? Can you call them back at a phone number they will provide to you in case the current call connection is broken? A HESITATION or Refusal, on their part may indicate that they are calling from a manipulated displayed FAKE number. A legitimate contact will invite your call back.
This all appeared odd to me and an attempted fraud, except that ANTHONY repeatedly stated that if I would work closely with him and follow his instructions step by step our process would enable him to undue the fraudulent debit .. which he stated had already been made. Just trust him and he would give me the specifics of how to do it and we would have it cleared up today.
ANTHONY asked me to go to a website http://www.ANYDESK.COM and choose the DOWNLOAD button to add a program to my computer to help us with the unraveling process. I did this but had difficulty finding the ANYDESK.EXE program to double click on it and install it. With some difficulty, and with his increasing intensity yet patience, I did download and install it. A Welcome screen presented and requested that I agree to a number of actions .. which ANTHONY hurriedly encouraged me to do as if they were safe and required to dismiss the apparently already lodged fraud. I did tick these option boxes and proceeded.
In order to confirm if debits had been placed on any of my accounts, it would be necessary for me to go online to my CIBC Profile , login, and check my accounts. In doing this, I found NO debits against any accounts. I was increasingly finding myself in a quandary of finding the Reality to NOT be as ANTHONY had repeatedly defined it.
On present REVIEW, it seems likely that as I was checking my CIBC online accounts, the downloaded program and the fraudsters were mirroring my keystrokes and also viewing my accounts and details. It became evident to me that the ANYDESK.EXE program had taken over my computer and was jumping around the displayed and stored data, and, another screen arose referencing a Global Transfer. This was too much for me and I prepared to leave the process. ANTHONY became even more intense on urging me to continue if I did not want to have this fraud remain and be open to more fraud situations in the future.
Closure: Getting out of a Scam-in-progress.
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I attempted to close all the open files and the ANYDESK program, yet found that impossible, so, I turned OFF my computer, and turned OFF my cellphone.
Turning my cellphone and computer back ON after a few minutes, I logged into the CIBC website again and checked my accounts for any unwanted debits. I did eventually find that a debit for US $1,980.00 had been placed against a SAVINGS account for a Global Money Transfer. It had been pushed in just as I was disconnecting, it appeared. This sparked me into making an effort to Protect my computer and files, and to then contact CIBC for their help is reversing this fraud.
I did a files SEARCH to find the ANYDESK.EXE program which I suspected was still on the computer. I eventually found it in a very unlikely directory, right-clicked on it, and selected a program .. Ashampoo WinOptimizer .. which I had acquired perhaps as a Free Download over a year earlier, and selected for it to DESTROY the ANYDESK.EXE .. which it noted would be worked on with DoD 5220.22-M (7 Overwrite passes) very hard to recover. With the computer now Safe and Protected I took almost 40 minutes to organize and write my hurried noted before calling CIBC.
On contacting CIBC directly in an effort to have the charge to the SAVINGS account reversed, I spoke with and was directed to the following phone numbers, departments, and individuals:
1-800-465-2422 --- General CIBC VISA access
transferred to 1-866-330-7344 --- ROD, ... of the General Banking Department
who transferred me to 1-877-208-8801 --- ANSUN (m) ... of Global Money Transfer
who transferred me to 1-877-208-8801 of the Fraud Department
who transferred me to 1-866-768-0815 --- JACOB of the Credit Card Change Department
---- who informed me that a NEW credit card would be sent by CIBC HQ to my local CIBC branch, to arrive in 10 days (also noted as 3 to 5 business days by another agent), at which time the branch would contact me to advise that they had my new card, ready for my pickup from them.
==== Each obtained details relevant to their responsibility of what had been my FRAUD experience and was my Identity.
I was advised to contact the following Credit Bureau offices (Canada) ...
1-800-663-9980 === TransUnion (credit information reporting),
https://www.transunion.ca/customer-support/contact-us
between the hours of 8 a.m.-8 p.m. ET (Monday to Friday)
1-866-828-5961 === Equifax, (English)
National Consumer Relations Box 190, Montreal, Quebec H1S 2Z2
https://www.equifax.ca/personal/dispute-credit-report-form/
Consumer Credit Report Update Form (complete for Changes to profile
https://www.equifax.ca/personal/contact-us/
Hours: Monday to Friday: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (ET)
Saturday and Sunday: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (ET)
and have my Profile updated to show that ..
--- I had experienced a FRAUD attempt and reality on September 5 in the mid-afternoon by way of cellphone and Internet-by-computer
--- I was canceling and changing/replacing my
----- CIBC credit card, ===== CIBC 4500 6551 6755 5083 , Expiry 07/26 --- CLOSED
----- CIBC convenience/debit card, === CIBC 4506 4457 7417 5853 (Password xxx) --- CLOSED --- and
----- CIBC bank SAVINGS joint account ==== CIBC 02722-77-27135 --- CLOSED
AND that I wanted a credit LIMIT to be placed on the Profile NOT to be authorized above $300, unless I had been contacted by them and that I had provided my Personal Approval.
I was advised to go to my local CIBC branch and have my Convenience/Debit card replaced and to provide a new PASSWORD to it, added at the branch.
I was further advised that I would best contact any services or companies with whom I had pre-authorized debit arrangements, remove any details of my original credit card or account and enter my NEW credit card details and account number, as relevant, and attach to them new-to-me PIN numbers.
Fallout: Afterscam Possibilities that Challenge.
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This has been an unexpected, demanding, lengthy set of urgent efforts to which I have been exposed in Very Poor health.
It is my hope that if you receive and read this, you can AVOID any similar experiences and risks.
The REALITY is that if YOU are caught in this type of FRAUD you will likely find it necessary to enact some or all of the following in addition to others not noted here yet perhaps more Relevant to YOU than to me.
I had ONE Joint Savings account compromised and NOT any of a Credit Card, chequing account or other accounts. YOU may have ALL of your financials disrupted. Here are some of the necessary changes that YOU can avoid if you LEARN from this and other documents how to recognize a likely scam on contact.
Sources of repetitive Credits to your accounts
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