Outline:
Email purporting to be from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) claims that your credit card was accidentally charged twice for your last tax bill and you are therefore owed a refund.
Analysis:
The email is not from the CRA and the promised refund does not exist. It is just one version of a long running series of phishing scams that have falsely claimed that recipients are eligible for a tax refund.
Clicking the link in the email takes you to a fraudulent website that asks you to claim your supposed refund by supplying your credit card numbers and other personal and financial information. All of the information you supply on the fake site can be collected by criminals and used to commit credit card fraud and identity theft.
The following Hoax-Slayer YouTube video provides more information about such tax refund phishing scams:
Subject: You have a new Refuned-#CRA-CANADA.When your last payment of your Impot, your credit card was charged twice for the settlement of your account (210.98 CAD.), to overcome this problem with our system we ask you to please follow the link below to restitution the amount debited accidentally.
Complete your Tax Refund
Please do not reply to this email. We are unable to respond to inquiries sent to this address. For immediate answers to your questions, visit our Help Center by clicking “Help” located on CRA Revenue page or email.
Sincerely, we are sorry for this error..
©Canada Revenue & Agency, 2016. All rights reserved.
Last updated: October 1, 2016
First published: October 1, 2016
By Brett M. Christensen
About Hoax-Slayer
References
Canada Revenue Agency Tax Refund Phishing Scam
CRA – Protect yourself against fraud
Phishing Scams – Anti-Phishing Information
