The 'free phone' scam that gets you to mail your own device away

According to the West Shore RCMP, a scam is circulating that convinces people to order a free phone, then convinces them to mail it straight back to the scammer.

The call comes from someone posing as staff from a telecommunications company. They tell the resident they are eligible for a free mobile phone. No payment is needed at this stage, which is what makes it convincing. The resident is told to order the device, and it arrives at their home exactly as promised.

That is the moment the scam actually starts. A few days after delivery, the same contact calls again. This time they say a mistake was made. The wrong phone was sent out, they explain, and it needs to go back. To make the return easy, they email a pre-paid shipping label, and they give an address: a PO Box, located outside the province.

The victim, trying to be helpful and following instructions from someone who already seems to represent a real company, mails the phone to that PO Box. The phone is gone. There was never a mistake to correct.

The free offer is not the scam. It is the setup. Handing over a phone through legitimate-looking channels gives the caller a reason to call back later with a plausible request, and a shipping label gives that request the shape of paperwork rather than persuasion. By the time the victim is asked to post the device to an out-of-province PO Box, the interaction already feels routine. They ordered something, now they are returning something. Nothing about a return request feels like fraud.

There is a second cost that can be worse than the phone itself. The initial order process, run through the scammer's own channel rather than the company's real one, may have already collected personal or financial information from the victim. The device loss is visible. The data loss may not be.

The West Shore RCMP point to a few checks that break the pattern early. Unsolicited offers of a free device deserve suspicion before the order goes in. A company claiming it shipped the wrong item and asking for a return to a PO Box, especially one outside BC, is a signal to stop and verify independently, using a number from the company's own website or a billing statement, not a number given by the caller. A Social Insurance Number, password or credit card detail should never go to someone who called first.

The return request is the step the whole scheme depends on. Remove it, and the victim just keeps a free phone. More information and reporting guidance is available through the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.