The other night I called the OPP as they are the force that covers the "Grafton" area. Cobourg detachment covers the area. What do I get? A generic voicemail saying they will try to get back to people (this is the main number for that detachment) in 24 hours. So, called the non-Emergency OPP number and get the 911 call centre 40kms up the highway from here.

Talk to them, they are not sure how to handle it- guy goes off to get some information. Ultimately, they are not positive about what to do, so they tell me to go to the local police force here (Perth Police) where they should take the report and then forward the details appropriately.

Smartass that I am, I ask "how do you guys share such information- if these people have been pulling a scam, there could be 500 'victims' in 10 provinces and 3 territories."

The answer; "they might send an email out to the different police forces".

Email? To what, a 1000 different forces head offices across the country? Then what happens with such an email?

Anyways, so I dig a bit further; "Do you guys have the ability to input information into CPIC as some sort of investigative tool or 'notification'?" (CPIC is the system managed by the RCMP for all Canadian law enforcement agencies/agents to access information on individuals- i.e. one of the systems to police are checking behind the scenes when you are pulled over in a traffic stop, as well as their own database/records). The answer- "no, we have no such system for investigations".

Holy Crap !!! This goes back 10 years to when there was that Homolka/Bernardo situation in Ontario- police in Ontario could not connect violent crimes in Scarborough with violent crimes in St. Catherines for a 10-year period while a couple of predators were raping and kidnapping children. One of the things that was supposed to come out of that fiasco was that police were going to be able to access information from one another as an investigative tool to avoid such things occurring in the future. Maybe they did implement -something- for violent crime investigation (?) but certainly did not for general investigative processes.

So, bottom line is, local PD has the information- officer who took report said he would call the people to get an idea of what is going on and report it to the local (Cobourg) OPP Detachment afterwards. I think the fraud itself may bother them, but I think even more so the idea of someone possibly making a false claim of being a "retired RCMP" may have irritated them even more.