Fraudsters took advantage of flaws in the Canada Revenue Agency’s systems to take control of the tax accounts of hundreds of taxpayers, after getting their hands on confidential data used by a firm that produces millions of tax returns. tax each year.
The information, first reported by Radio-Canada, was confirmed by The Journal.
Last spring, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) discovered that scammers had obtained confidential electronic codes used by a tax preparer, H&R Block, to file returns on behalf of their clients.
Thanks to this information, the fraudsters were able to take control of the accounts of many taxpayers and change the bank account on file.
According to the investigation conducted by CBC and Radio-Canada, the CRA only closed the breach after realizing that it had made several false refunds to taxpayers who shared the same bank account.
The fraudsters would have managed to extract $6 million, and they had made requests for $14 million more.
Sources told the Journal that the CRA ruled out the possibility that “the leak came from the Agency”. “The CRA systems have not been compromised, fraudsters got their hands on information on the dark web,” we were told.
As of this writing, H&R Block Canada has not responded to questions from Journal. However, the company told Radio-Canada that the leak does not come from its systems either.
More and more violations
Our sources were unable to say precisely how many taxpayers were affected by this scheme, but they noted that the number of incidents affecting the CRA has exploded in recent years, and particularly since the pandemic.
In all, the CRA was the victim of 31,468 privacy breaches between March 2020 and December 2023, which affected 62,000 taxpayers, according to figures obtained by the public broadcaster, while only 113 privacy breaches occurred. privacy at the CRA have been reported in recent annual reports from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
“All these files were reported retroactively after being the subject of an investigation,” argued a government source.
More details will follow…
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