Parents of minors in Quebec have been living an administrative nightmare since fraudsters stole the identity of their children to collect the Canadian Emergency Benefit in the face of the federal government.
They are 15 years old. They have never worked or otherwise far too little to qualify for the Canada Emergency Benefit (CEP). Yet fraudsters have used their social insurance number to collect the federal benefit on their behalf.
Several families have contacted The newspaper to testify to a phenomenon that is not anecdotal. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Center received 1333 reports of PKU-related identity fraud between March 6 and July 31.
For young Tommy Larochelle, it all started at the end of June when he received a check for $ 887 from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in the mail. It was a tax refund for his 2019 income tax return, when the teenager never worked.
Her mother, Patricia Harvey, contacted the CRA and found that a fraudster had made three calls to the agency and attempted to sign up for direct deposit. As that attempt failed, the CRA instead mailed a check after receiving a false tax return in Tommy’s name.
Hidden fraud
Without this famous payment, the Harvey-Larochelle family would not have discovered the pot aux roses until 2021 when Tommy would have received a T4 for his PKU benefits.
The same scenario happened to a family in Beauce, whose 15-year-old received a check for $ 1,200 in tax refunds, in early July, when he only declared $ 2,000 in income for 2019. .
Since then, the boy’s mother, who requested anonymity to protect her son, has wasted hours and hours of phone work in an attempt to resolve the issue.
The two women suspect that the problem stems from the personal data leak at Desjardins. Their children both have cash accounts and were victims of the historic leak in 2019.
- LISTEN to Félix Séguin’s Crime and Society column on QUB radio:
Hard to convince Ottawa
Fraudsters who have acquired this confidential data are now using it to collect the PCU and perhaps other federal benefits, fears the mother of Beauce.
She has been trying for weeks to convince Services Canada that her son is the victim of fraud. But the federal office is asking for written proof from the CRA, which has not been provided to it to date.
“It’s the house that drives you crazy,” she breathes. In the meantime, “time goes by, the fraudster may still be using this information and we can’t do anything,” she laments.
– With Jules Richer, Bureau of investigation
12,000: Number of fraud clues processed by Ottawa as of July 24 for three Ottawa pandemic aid programs.
–
