Scams in Edmonton are evolving after the pandemic

The CEO and founder of Edmonton-based Knifewear Group claims another website is advertising their exclusive knives using Knifewear’s own photos and descriptions – saying they feel violated.

Kevin Kent said, “They’ve stolen our intellectual property, they’ve stolen our words and they’ve stolen our videos and they’ve stolen our photographs.”

Knifewear Group founder Kent said the site “Woodrmoone” was brought to his attention by a customer who was surprised they were selling the same knives for so much cheaper. But Kent said it’s not possible the other site has Knifewear’s products in stock.

Kevin Kent founder of Knifewear Group founder Kent with a knife made by his company. (Photo Credit: CityNews)

“Many of our products are exclusive to us, so I know that they don’t have them,” said Kent, “It’s not just competition, it’s pure fraud, really.”

Kent Claimed the other company appears to sell Knifewear’s handmade Japanese kitchen knives and other ware – but for extremely discounted prices.

“I think it’s really really important for customers, especially when they’re buying online to understand who they’re buying from,” said Kent, “And of course their prices are fantastic, they’re like 70 per cent off right now. So if you see something and think, ‘That’s too good to be true,’ chances are it’s too good to be true.”

Knifewear knife. (Photo Credit: Knifewear)

Scams can use new tech to find victims. This week Edmonton police reported citizens lost more than $5.6 million to cryptocurrency investment scams in the last 3 years. An Internet security expert attributed this to the pandemic.

“People with their COVID support payments and so on, suddenly have money in their bank account and they decide that they have to go and invest it somewhere,” said Thomas Keenan, author of ‘Technocreep,’ “So that’s where the crypto scams come in. They go out on Robinhood and they buy stocks and they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Keenan said scams are getting more convincing because we put so much personal information out on social media.

Knifewear knife demonstration. (Photo Credit: Knifewear)

“This is the fuel of this whole industry, the fact that we give out so much information,” said Keenan, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, but you can at least restrict it to people you want to see it.”

Knifewear’s CEO says they’ve contacted Shopify and Woodrmoone’s web host to get the products taken down off their site, but they haven’t received a reply.

CityNews reached out to the support email listed on Woodrmoone’s website – and it couldn’t be delivered – indicating either a misspelling on their site, or that the email doesn’t exist.