Last Tuesday, while at work, Naheed Amin says she got a phone call. According to her phone’s call display, it was from her 31-year-old son.

“I picked up the phone and as soon as I hear somebody else talking, I knew something was wrong,” she told CTV Saskatoon.

The person on the other end introduced himself as a Saskatoon police officer and told her that her son had been arrested and was being detained on national security purposes, she said.

“I was absolutely distraught, because I didn’t know what was happening.”

The caller, who provided a police badge number and warrant number, told her she couldn’t hang up or it would be “detrimental” to her son, she said. He then told her she’d need to pay her son’s bail – totaling more than $3,700.

“I said I do not have that much money.”

The caller asked if she could leave work and go to the bank. She obliged, and after a failed attempt at opening up a line of credit, Amin withdrew what she had in her bank account, and maxed out her credit card, to buy $3,000 worth of gift cards. She scratched the back and sent the caller the codes on the back.

“All this time I’m thinking this is how security threats are treated, this is the way I guess, because I don’t know,” Amin said.

After she sent the codes the caller told her to hang up, go home and then call her son back. He would be ready to be picked up at the police station.

“So when I get inside my home and I call my son and I said, ‘Hello, don’t worry I’m coming to pick you up.’

“And he says, ‘Mom, what are you talking about?’ and I could hear the clutter of his dishes. ‘He said mom, what are you talking about?’ I said, ‘You were arrested.’ He said, ‘Mom, I’m going to the gym.’ And that’s when it dawned on me, and I started howling.”

Amin believes she missed the red flags in part because the scam was sophisticated. The call appeared to come from her son’s phone number, and the scammers provided police badge and warrant numbers.

“With the advance of technology, frauds continue to become increasingly more complex and sophisticated, and often very difficult for municipal police services to investigate. Fraudsters are smooth operators that are often good at extracting information to make someone feel the conversation they are having is authentic,” Saskatoon Police Services spokeswoman Kelsie Fraser said.

“When we talk about frauds, we help to educate others and hopefully prevent others from falling victim. In addition to talking about frauds, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre is a great resource for people to educate themselves about the types of scams out there.”

Amin believes she was targeted because of her ethnicity and said another reason she fell for the scam was the added stress that her son was being considered a national security threat.

“It was about the thought that my son being named as a terrorist,” Amin said.

“The entity of being called a terrorist or being a partner of terrorism or anti-national activity is something that will definitely hit a community that is already under stress – that’s already under the thought that we have to prove ourselves to be good.”

Amin says it was never about the money and she wants to share her story to ensure other vulnerable people don’t fall for a similar scam.

“More so as a psychological trauma that I went through. I don’t want anybody to go through this.”

Amin has filed a police report, and the Saskatoon Police Services says its economic crime section is investigating.