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What happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas anymore.
More likely, it’s getting posted on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, shared on Snap and online streaming platforms.
It all seems harmless, until it’s not.
That’s when West Vancouver private investigator Denis Gagnon usually gets called.
“The internet is global, it’s faceless, it’s complicated. Technology has gotten way ahead of people’s knowledge,” says Gagnon, a former cop and president of West Vancouver-based BCSI Investigations, who often gets called when people’s forays into the online world go badly wrong.
“People don’t break into your home through the front door now. They break into your home through your computer. They break into your life through your smartphone,” he says.
Most people seem unaware their movements can be tracked through geo-location data on their apps or that in the wrong hands their phone’s data can potentially be mirrored on to another device.
But scammers and extortionists usually don’t even have to bother with that.
Most people share too much online
“Most people share way too much online,” says Gagnon: where they live, what they ate, when and where they’re going on vacation and with who.
The result is an unprecedented increase in cyber crime that preys on people’s need for connection, says Gagnon, something that scammers are all too happy to provide. “It started 10 years ago and now it’s reaching an epidemic stage.”
In North Vancouver court recently, a personal trainer was sentenced to house arrest for scamming two friends and clients out of $157,000 by getting them to put money into a fake investment scheme.
The online world is heavily populated with such scammers, said Gagnon. The difference being, it’s much easier for victims to get fooled, and few of them get caught.
Romance scammers target bank accounts
Romance scammers gain the trust of people they meet online and strike up virtual friendships that progress to virtual romantic relationships, said Gagnon.
In one local case Gagnon was involved in, a wealthy woman in her 50s from the North Shore believed she was in a long-distance relationship with a good-looking world traveller. The photos he sent her weren't actually of him, as Gagnon later discovered through reverse image searching. But in the meantime, he convinced her to sink $1.2 million into a purported investment scheme over a period of several months.
The phony boyfriend was supposed to fly out and meet the woman. But he never showed up. “He always had a reason,” said Gagnon. That’s when she realized she’d been scammed.
“If you’ve been talking to someone [online] for [one or two] years, and the person hasn’t been able to make it there, there is a problem, right?” said Gagnon. “He’s not gonna come.”
In that case, Gagnon was able to recover a significant proportion of the funds through the woman’s bank, which accepted that it missed significant red flags in her banking activity, said Gagnon.
But often victims are asked to transfer money in Bitcoin or other crypto currency. Bitcoin is unregulated, but it’s also seen as sexy and exciting, promoted by celebrities and on social media.
Bitcoin is trendy
“Bitcoin is trendy,” said Gagnon, which is handy for scammers who don’t want to be traced.
Not all online scams involve romances.
In one infamous case, a Vancouver-area man used his association with a legitimate real estate company to convince several Lower Mainland residents to invest in a phony real estate scheme. Except there was no real estate, said Gagnon.
By the time his victims cottoned on, the fake real estate tycoon had skipped the country.
One of the victims, a Coquitlam man, lost $300,000.
Interpol is still searching for the scammer, who has proven adept at changing his identity and moving on before his schemes are discovered.
“He made people believe that he was very well connected to the real estate world,” said Gagnon. And such scammers – like the fake heiress Anna Delvey, who scammed her way across New York between 2013 and 2017 and later was the inspiration for the Netflix series “Inventing Anna” – are “just very good at what they do.”
Cyber scams often unreported
Often cyber crimes go unreported. In many cases, victims are too embarrassed to tell anyone – including their families and police. Admitting to being scammed is particularly taboo in some cultures, said Gagnon.
Instead, victims turn to him hoping to recover their losses.
More difficult is the recent rise in “sextortion” activity, said Gagnon.
Sextortion on the rise
Essentially the scam involves obtaining sexually graphic images or video of a person then threatening to post them online or send them to family and coworkers unless money is paid.
Often victims – both male or female – are tricked into thinking they are exchanging racy material with a new sexual or romantic interest. In others, an ex threatens to release videos as an act of “revenge porn” when the relationship ends.
In still others, people – usually young women – who are posting sexually explicit material of themselves for paying subscribers on sites like Only Fans will find themselves “outed” and blackmailed.
Once those images fall into the wrong hands and are posted online, they are very difficult to track and remove, said Gagnon.
“It happens to all kinds of normal people,” said Gagnon. “And it’s very, very common. Most cell phones have a video recorder.”
Gagnon advises anyone seeking to avoid such reputational disasters to ask lots of questions, not overshare, and to be mindful of their digital footprint.
Gagnon’s own digital presence is limited to LinkedIn. “And my face isn’t there,” he adds.
