Calgary men charged in fraudulent home security scam

Calgary police have charged two men after they created dozens of fraudulent accounts and contracts for home security systems and pocketed the earnings.

Police say, over the course of a four-month investigation, investigators found the two men, who were leading a Calgary-based home-alarm business, created 80 fraudulent accounts and contracts.

The men then billed the fake contracts to a parent company in Saskatchewan which resulted in over $130,000 being paid out to them.

The Saskatchewan company had arranged for the Calgary group to develop customer contracts by selling, installing and servicing security systems. In doing this, the company would be paid for their work each time they signed up a new client.

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Then, in August, the parent company began getting complaints from companies who were getting billed for services they never had signed up for. By October, they started receiving payment rejections for the fake contracts.

When the legitimacy of the contracts raised red flags with the parent company, an audit was conducted on the properties the Calgary business claimed they had contracts for.

Through these audits, it was found that none of the contracts were legitimate. The Calgary Police Service was promptly notified.

Police found the two men responsible were using the identities of several existing customers to create the fake contracts, while also creating two fake front companies to authorize the contracts.

The two men have both been charged with fraud over $5,000 and uttering forged documents.