ENFIELD: The phone number to East Hants RCMP has been caught up in a crime itself–being used in several spoofing incidents.
Beginning in mid-March, 2025, the detachment began fielding an unusually high number of telephone calls to the non-emergency line.
S/Sgt. Michael Balmaceda said these calls were not the result of requesting police service, it was members of the public returning missed calls.
“The calls were received from all over North America,” said S/Sgt. Balmaceda.
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He said that the RCMP Information Technology Department were engaged and the calls were temporarily routed to an automated system that redirected legitimate police calls to another non emergency number.
“The RCMP East Hants was a victim of a telephone scam called Phone Spoofing,” he said.
Phone spoofing is when a scammer sends false information to a caller ID to make it appear that a call is coming from a different number, usually from a trusted source.
Scammers collect phone numbers from websites, classified ads, or even social media.
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The issue appears to have been resolved, and the cause is being investigated.
S/Sgt. Balmaceda said the East Hants RCMP phone number does not appear on received phone call.
“If you do receive a call from the RCMP East Hants Staff that you do not answer, a voicemail will be left requesting a call back,” he said.
