Posted: June 8th, 2010 - 6:27am by Doug Powell

Restaurants in British Columbia (that’s in Canada) are being warned to watch for scammers who pose as health inspectors.

The phoney inspectors sometimes threaten fines for failing to schedule inspections.

That's a warning sign, according to health authority officials, because inspections are nearly always unannounced, not scheduled.

If inspections are being scheduled, it’s probably a food safety auditor – zing.

The fraudsters try to extract detailed business and personal information from the restaurant operator for the purposes of identity theft, apparently for use in circumventing Craigslist's security settings.

Tim Shum, Fraser Health's regional director of health protection, said restaurants should ask to see the photo ID of anyone coming to their premises claiming to be an inspector.