'It looks quite real': Two Ontarians lose money to fake phone scam

About 85 per cent of Canadians have a smartphone and once you have one they’re hard to live without. The latest smartphones can cost as much as $2,000, so if you’re trying to save money, make sure you don’t get caught in a fake smartphone scam.

Pickering resident Eric Gerroir said he needed to replace his aging smartphone, so he went online to Facebook Marketplace and found a Samsung Galaxy S24 for $700.

“The front of it looked identical to the Samsung Galaxy S24 and the back looks identical as well,” said Gerroir, holding the phone.

The seller had all the packaging for the phone and even a receipt that said it was worth $2,000 plus tax.

“This is what I thought I was buying,” Gerroir said, pointing to the S24 pictured in the box. “It looks quite real even when you open it - it looks identical to the real thing.”

Pickering resident Eric Gerroir holds up the receipt and packaging of the fake smartphone that was sold to him.

After Gerroir paid $700 for the smartphone and got home, he noticed there were spelling errors on the receipt, and when he turned the phone on, it was slow.

That’s when he realized right away it was a counterfeit. 

“It wasn’t till I got home that I realized I had bought some kind of Frankenstein Samsung phone,” said Gerroir, who added, “That money could have gone toward my daughter’s RESP, so to get scammed was devastating.”

Nathaniel Lawrence of Scarborough also thought he was buying the latest Samsung Galaxy S24 he found on Kijiji.

Lawrence said that after he gave the seller $550, he could tell the phone was a cheap knockoff as soon as he opened the box.

“I wasn’t unaware that scammers can open the box, tamper with the phone, and then reseal it like it was never opened,” said Lawrence, who added, “I think they opened it up and customized it so it looks like an S24, but it’s just a regular random Android phone.”

Consumer Reports (CR) said anyone buying a smartphone through a platform like Facebook Marketplace or Kijiji is taking a risk.

“You could be purchasing a phone that is not the phone that you think it is, you could be purchasing a broken phone, or you could be purchasing a stolen phone,” said Nick De Leon with CR.

CR advises if you’re trying to save money, check with wireless providers, as you can buy older model phones at lower prices. You can also buy refurbished phones from Amazon or Best Buy that will come with a warranty.

As soon as Lawrence and Gerroir handed over cash to buy the fake phones, they were ghosted by both sellers. Yet, their ads remain online, hoping to trap more victims.

“I know she is doing the same thing to other people, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to them that I had happened to me,” said Gerroir.

The fake phones are generally made with old parts and put in casings that look like newer phones. These counterfeit phones may also not be safe to use because they could contain viruses or ransomware set up to harvest your data.