A random "can you hear me?" question should be your first red flag that this unsolicited call could be a scam, said Kelly Richmond Pope, a professor of forensic accounting at DePaul University and the author of Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets From the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry. A conversation with a random number that starts with "can you hear me?" is suspicious "because it's so outside of the typical conversational cycle," Pope said.
Peel Regional Police say they are receiving reports of scam calls that appear to come from their non-emergency line largely targeting members of Asian communities. The caller claims to be a police officer, police said in a news release Thursday. "The caller references personal information about the victim to establish trust and extract further sensitive information, including banking details," police said.