Phone Scam Recovery

Hi there, my name is Gregory and I'm fundraising to earn back money that I just lost to a (pretty darn convincing, might I say) phone scam recently. Usually these scams are very easy to pick out as they all have common threads connecting them. This one happened to line up perfectly with recent events in my life and so it never occured to me that it was fake until it was too late. So here's the story as clearly as I can put it:

 

I get this call early one morning saying that Canada border patrol intercepted a package under my name containing illegal substances and that there was a warrant out for my arrest. I immediately thought of the burley I'd just ordered and worried it had gotten flagged for some reason. The guy on the other end identified some of the package updates that happened to line up with my order, but then said that they contained cocaine and heroin and other drugs that were being shipped to Quebec.

 

I denied that they were my orders but the guy on the other end said I legally needed to prove it. He then asked me if there was some way my identity might have been stolen, which I said was possible as I had lost my wallet over a year ago. I'd cancelled my two bank cards but didn't suspend my license, which the guy on the phone said was probably how the real culprit was able to use my name.

 

He then said I had two options; I could request a court date and hire an attorney or I could hand the matter over to my local RCMP detachment. I opted for the latter and he asked me to give him the number to the closest RCMP station. This should've given it away but I was still at the time relieved I hadn't broken any law and didn't think about it. I googled it and gave him the number, and he told me not to pick up unless it was it was from the number I gave him. Sure enough, a few moments later I got a call from what seemed to be the Chestermere police with a different man on the other end. After listing off some various legalities about the phone call (something about the Privacy Act of 1959 and how I was bound by anything I said in the call etc), he said the first thing we needed to do was drain my bank accounts as quickly as possible so that the culprit would not know we were trying to catch him.

 

Then over the course of about two hours, he guided me over the phone through the process of going to the bank, withdrawing my daily limit, and then going to a BitCoin kiosk where he texted me a QR code to use where I could deposit the cash, which he said would be a secure place for the money to be monitored by the police. All this while I was texting my family through Telegram and at that point had becme skeptical that my ordeal was legitimate. Concerned, I went home and googled any scams related to the border patrol. Sure enough, this one was relatively new and had already nabbed some people pretty bad. I think there was a woman here in Calgary who lost her life savings of 23k to it.

 

Anyhoo folks, there it is. I should've been far more vigilant but everything happened to line up so perfectly along the way. The thing that fooled me the most was the masked phone number from the Chestermere RCMP. And yes there were so many points as it all happened that should've given it away, but it was so darn connected to my actual life that nothing ever occured to me until it was too late.

 

I really hope you will consider donating to help me get back on my feet. It could've been far worse but it still hit me pretty hard. Anything at this point would be helpful.

 

Much obliged for your support!