March is Fraud Awareness Month in Canada

March 2006 has been labelled as "Fraud Awareness Month" by consumer law enforcement groups and police forces throughout North America.

In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission seems to be leading the promotion. For more information on the U.S. initiatives, visit www.ftc.gov. under News Releases for March 2006.

In Canada, the Competition Bureau seems to be taking the lead on the initiative, but has also appears to have impressive support from many other enforcement organizations such as the OPP, the RCMP, and many provincial enforcement organizations. As well, the Competition Bureau also chairs a wide sweeping group of organizations with interests in fraud prevention - specifically called the "Fraud Prevention Forum". The forum consists of many private financial organizations, as well as the public enforcement groups.

The major first step in all of these initiatves will be a major public education / prevention of fraud program.

The stories, from the Competition Bureau, are all right here.

Rainbow Investigations, of course, is delighted with these new developments. Naturally, we support any measure designed to educate the public on how to avoid fraud.

We also have our ideas on how to prevent fraud from entering the marketplace. We continue to be very concerned that major media outlets, (such as the Sun newspaper chain, in particular), continue to accept and print major full page fraudulent ads of bogus health remedies. Just today, the Calgary Sun again ran a full page ad of the fraudulent Canadian diet scam, Ciren12. The same paper also had another ad elsewhere - this latter one was of a product promoted to increase breast size.

We believe advertising compliance organizations must be strengthened in their ability to take sanctions against media outlets who continue to provide avenues for fraudulent advertisers. We see no reason why this particular outlet can not do a better job of deciding what advertising is appropriate to be printed.

We believe that as well as the education component, which we support fully, there must be effective enforcement and prosecution against organizations who clearly make fraud as their living (such as the whole Montreal diet fraud group). To this group, education has no effect, and the victims of these promotions, and other similiar fraudulent miracle cure promotions, who can be found on the various health "chatgroups", tend to be relatively uneducated people who may have low self-esteem.

In the area of our interst, which is health fraud, (which is much more than health insurance fraud, by the way), we would support, as we have said many times, the development of some sort of professional investigative unit, which has the mandate and the skill set to investigate and enforce the many health frauds that continue to dominate Canada. As far as we can see, there still is no such unit in Canada, which is a major problem in our view.

However, having said all the above, with these latest developments, there does appear to be a new breeze of optimism in the air. We sure hope the momentum doesn't stop here, but in fact keeps building, in this ever so crucial area.

Date of Story: Sunday, March 05, 2006
Story Posted By: Ron Reinhold
Source: Ron Reinhold

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