Montreal Marathon sends fraudsters running

Morgan Bye is determined to run the 42.2 km of the Beneva Montreal Marathon for the third consecutive year, on September 22. The bib with his name on it is for sale by at least four people, both women and men, on Facebook pages in the name of the most popular sporting event in the city.

How is this possible? Fraudsters are scouring social media to make as much money as possible between now and the start signal, which will propel some 27,000 runners from September 20 to 22. The scam: offering a bib that doesn’t exist in a Facebook post or in response to runners desperate for a pass.

When a potential buyer comes forward, the seller demands an Interac or PayPal transfer of a hundred dollars before transferring his stake. Some send a fake proof of registration. Of course, once the money is transferred, the fraudster will never fulfill his part of the contract.

Alexandra Bélisle is one of the many victims – The Press counted at least a dozen and spoke with three of them – who believed the account was legitimate. She even took care to verify that the seller’s profile, topped with a photo of a runner, displayed a name that appears on the official list of competitors of the Marathon Beneva. The records can be searched on the partner site Race Roster. “I saw that the person had a bib and the price was reasonable, given the high demand for the 10 km, so I was confident,” says the woman who lost $90 because it was a fake profile.

With the marathon and half-marathon sold out since June and the 10 km race since July, the scarcity of bibs has created a craze that scammers are not immune to, observes Alexandre Ratthé, executive producer of the Marathon Beneva de Montréal (MBDM). A situation he “deplores” and which adds to the already colossal workload of the organization. The organization has had to expand its “monitoring” team for the official Facebook group, Coureuses et coureurs du MBDM. It reports fake accounts every day. Warnings have also been issued to members, emphasizes Mr. Ratthé.

Fraudsters are lurking on the legitimate page managed by Courons Montréal, but especially in variations that have nothing to do with the organization. A problematic group that brings together more than 2,000 members is particularly causing confusion, since the account of Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, sponsors such as Sports Experts and institutions such as the Olympic Park Sports Centre have mistakenly identified it in official publications.

This page, Marathon Beneva de Montréal, is infested with fraudsters who sell fake bibs, it has been noted The PressIn just two days, we identified around sixty fraudulent profiles looking for victims.

Although the event organization has multiplied reports to Meta, the page – which also includes well-intentioned sellers – is thriving in parallel with the official platform.

Cunning fraudsters

The scheme is often elaborated to confuse skeptics, we found. “This is not the first time I have made this type of transaction,” explains Alexandra Bélisle. “I thought I was an alert person and had all the tools to detect this type of fraud, but the techniques have changed!”

Counterfeiters usually claim injury or travel abroad as reasons for their defection. Some provide “proof” of registration or fake receipts.

The Press contacted about twenty suspicious sellers via Facebook messaging. How do you recognize them? Their profile photo is often a few days or weeks old, their place of education or residence often has nothing to do with Quebec, and they only have a handful of connections. Many of them sell more than one bib, some up to ten, while a race is generally a personal challenge.

Some fraudsters take care to model their profile on that of a real and registered runner, like Morgan Bye. Scammers sent us his registration confirmation, with a postal address and the date of the transaction. The real runner confirmed to us that the address corresponded to his, even though it is not supposed to be public. The Beneva Montreal Marathon assured The Press that it had not been the victim of data leaks. Race Roster had not responded to our questions at the time of publication.

Doubts are setting in

As for the fake sellers to whom we pointed out that their name did not appear among the competitors in the September 22 race, they then took care to identify a registered runner and explain that they were selling a bib in his name. If we asked to make the transaction in person, our contact pretended to be outside Quebec or said they lived in a city far from Montreal. In one case, we said they were prepared to travel to Rimouski to make the exchange. We have not heard from them since…

When we revealed that we were journalists and that we were looking to better understand the workings of the scheme, vendors blocked us from Facebook, insulted us or threatened to file a complaint for false accusations. There was a glimmer of hope: a fraudster promised to tell us everything… in exchange for an Interac transfer.

Once unmasked, callers switched from French to English, a sign that scammers were likely using an online translator. Where are the scams originating? Email addresses used by the fraudsters pointed us to Nigeria and Kenya, but it’s not possible to know for sure if the scammers are based there. However, we did spot one scammer operating under different names out of Red Rock, Ontario. She’s an elderly woman who works as a maintenance worker and an Avon salesperson.

The Race Roster platform offers a secure intermediary service between sellers and buyers, but the organization of the Beneva Montreal Marathon says it learned about this possibility too late. It could be a solution to reduce fraud next year.

In the meantime, “if we have to find something positive”, Alexandre Ratthé is delighted to see that the runners are sticking together: many of them are identifying the fraudsters and warning the community against their tricks.