Phone fraud investigation leads to Cape Sable Island mailbox

David Myers was a beacon in Mary's life. She never met him in person, didn't know where he lived, but he would ring her home in a small southwest Nova Scotia fishing community four times a day just to see how she was doing.

He struck just when Mary needed the support most. She was nearly 70, her husband had been sick for six years and she lived in a mobile home off a dirt lane on Cape Sable Island with nothing more than old age pension and supplement for income.

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He first called to tell her she'd won a prize she could secure by sending a cheque to cover fees. But he quickly turned his attention to a second scheme when she told him she had no money.

Unbeknownst to her, Mary and her community mailbox became cogs in a scheme to defraud Canadians, exploited by a scammer who used her to cover his tracks.

A scammer who would eventually resort to threats and intimidation — even dispatching messages to her by hiring people to go to her home after she tried to cut all ties.

"I think he was just preying on what I was going through at the time," says Mary, which is not her real name and who CBC News has agreed not to identify because of concerns for her safety.

"I needed to hear some of the things he … he sounded like somebody that cared. But obviously he didn't."

Moving money

At his behest she began cashing money orders that arrived by mail, transferring the amounts by MoneyGram to addresses in Alberta, Ontario and Jamaica. She said David Myers never really told her why, and she did not question him.

Mail, phone and internet scams are now routine. Police often put out public warnings about the latest round of fraudulent calls: scammers purporting to be from the Canada Revenue Agency, offering prizes, or posing as grandchildren in trouble.

Through interviews and court documents used to obtain a search warrant, CBC News has pieced together details of one such multi-provincial fraud, showing the lengths criminals will go to extract money from their victims and avoid arrest.

The case centres on a mysterious man who calls himself David Myers. It's not clear if that's his real name or where he lives, and his victims only know him over the phone.

When Michael Berger, a retired media technician in Kelowna, B.C., first heard the name, it was following a call in January from the woman who looks in weekly on his 90-year-old father in Winnipeg.

The father, who has a touch of dementia, had told the caregiver he'd just won $5.5 million through Publishers Clearing House, and had sent off an $8,500 cheque so the money could be secured.

'So convincing'

Berger immediately called the bank and stopped the cheque. He also retrieved the address given to his father, a mailbox in rural in Nova Scotia.

"I had a really hard time convincing him that is was a fraud attempt," Berger said in an interview. "This David Myers fellow who was phoning him half a dozen times a day was so convincing."

Due to Berger's quick action, the money never made it into the hands of David Myers. What followed was a cascade of nasty and aggressive phone calls from the fraudster to Berger's father.

"This guy was just incessant, like just calling him six, seven times a day and threatening. Just awful, it was absolutely awful," Berger said.

"He would just like literally lean on him like nobody's business. Just be really mean and threatening."

Alerted by Berger, by this point RCMP in Nova Scotia had intercepted the cheque at Mary's community mailbox.

An affidavit sworn by an RCMP officer to get a court order to seize the cheque says the name David Myers and phone numbers used by him are linked to scams and attempted scams in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Alberta and Montreal.

'Vulnerable psychologies'

The Nova Scotia officer investigating the case, Sgt. MJ DeLuco, said she won't detail publicly what police have found so far or the chances of catching whoever is behind the scheme. But she said scam artists often groom their victims.

"The perpetrators of the fraud are very sophisticated in the sense that they prey upon vulnerable psychologies," she said.

Mary says she became roped in after Myers called out of the blue last year to tell her she'd won money and a car like the "expensive ones they have in Halifax."

He required money to change the prize from American to Canadian dollars. She sent what little she had, but told him she "really didn't have a cent."

That's when he began to capitalize on her in a different way. Mary says she never kept a penny from the money orders that landed in her mailbox — at least 10 over a six-month period, most in the range of a "couple hundred dollars."

'Wishful thinking'

She said she only learned the transfers were illegal after RCMP came looking for her. She quickly changed her phone number and cut off all ties with David Myers. Or at least she tried.

Twice he sent taxis to her home from Yarmouth, 80 kilometres away, telling the drivers she was to pay them. With no money she could not.

Soon after, neighbours told her a strange vehicle was spotted near her home. The subtle intimidation came to a head when a plumber knocked on her door. As he arrived, he got a call. She could hear an "angry" David Myers on the line and he wanted to speak with her.

She was so unnerved she went to police.

Since then she's heard nothing from David Myers, and recently reflected on how she became tangled up in his scheme.

"I guess when you're down and out, wishful thinking takes over and you hope that things are going to better for you," Mary said.