What to know<\/p>\n
AI-enhanced phone scams are increasing in Toronto, with fraudsters using personal information scraped from the internet to convincingly impersonate banks and credit card companies.<\/p>\n
A recent victim\u2019s experience on TikTok shows how scammers spoof caller IDs, use accurate personal details, and create urgency to trick people into authorizing fraudulent transactions.<\/p>\n
Police urge the public to hang up and call institutions back using official numbers, stay skeptical of unsolicited contact, and notify banks or credit agencies if they receive suspicious calls.<\/p>\n
Toronto police are warning the public about phone scams that are becoming more and more sophisticated thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n
The warning comes following a recent experience shared on social media by one victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a video posted to TikTok, the user named Jay explained that he received a phone call that appeared to be from his credit card company, with the caller claiming some fraudulent charges were appearing on his credit card. This included large purchases at Amazon, eBay, and Air Canada. He says the caller knew a lot of his information, including his birthday, the last four digits of his card, and his home address.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, this is legit. I\u2019m not getting scammed,\u201d Jay says in the clip.<\/p>\n
He explained that the caller then said he would receive a text message with a code that he needed to relay over the phone to be refunded for the charges. But when the text came through, it was for a purchase, not a refund.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the first red flag.\u201d<\/p>\n
The caller then explained that he was going to put Jay on hold, but if they got disconnected, he should call back on a personal cell phone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like a 647, like a personal number, not a 1-888 number,\u201d Jay explained.<\/p>\n
When he was put on hold, he became suspicious of the caller and hung up the phone before calling his credit card company, which had no record of any of these supposed transactions. While they were on the phone, a charge came through for $714, but was declined due to suspected fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Toronto police say this is not a new scam, but it is becoming more convincing thanks to AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he\u2019s describing there is what we are seeing on a daily basis at financial crimes,\u201d Detective David Coffey of the Toronto Police Service Financial Crimes Unit told Now Toronto.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really the realization of what we\u2019ve been talking about and what we\u2019ve been fearful of, in regard to artificial intelligence,\u201d Coffey explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said fraudsters utilize the technology to scrape the internet for information already accessible online.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI would pose to everybody that all our information is somewhere on the Internet, whether it\u2019s a result of a data breach, whether it\u2019s a result of our social media posts,\u201d Coffey explained. \u201cEverything that he described can be found about all of us, so his name, his address, his email \u2013 and now that artificial intelligence is gathering that information up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coffey shared that fraudsters use this information to be more convincing while targeting their victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been the single most prevalent fraud that we\u2019ve seen in the last six months. And really what we\u2019re talking about is the weaponization, finally, of artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
ADVICE FOR NOT FALLING VICTIM TO FRAUD<\/p>\n
Coffey says everyone should be skeptical of any phone call, text message or email they receive, and always consider that they could be fraudulent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have to be aware that the fraudsters are coming to us with our own information, so it can no longer be used to convince us,\u201d he explained, adding that you should always hang up and call the bank, credit card company, or whoever the caller is claiming to be back on their official number.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He adds that scammers often change their call display to match the official number for the company they claim to work for.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why they\u2019re providing that secondary number, which is the real number that they\u2019re calling from. They\u2019re just able to show the different numbers on the call display, which is just another tool that they\u2019re using to convince people they are who they say they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained that these are called confidence schemes, which, when it comes to the most common types of fraud they see, come second only to credit card fraud.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of today, Toronto citizens have lost $40 million in 2025 to these types of schemes,\u201d he explained, adding that this includes scammers pretending to be people like bank investigators, police officers, lawyers, and representatives of charitable groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all a symptom of the same tactic where AI is being utilized to target people with their own information,\u201d the detective shared.<\/p>\n
He urges anyone who receives a similar phone call or other communication to slow down and be critical.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially when you receive calls that present urgency, like,\u00a0 \u2018We need you to do this right now, or else you\u2019re going to lose all the money in your bank account.\u2019 Or, \u2018We need you to do this right now, or you\u2019re going to lose your driver\u2019s licence,\u201d Coffey explained, adding that urgency from the caller is always a red flag.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says the best thing to do is exactly what Jay did: hang up and call the number listed on the back of your card to verify that the original call was legitimate. Coffey also suggested that if you receive calls like this, it\u2019s a good idea to let your bank and other officials know, because if these calls happen, it does mean that your information is out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, people can further protect themselves by contacting their credit agency, have them flag their accounts, contact their bank and say, \u2018Listen, my information is probably out there somewhere, so just make me aware of any suspicious occurrences that have happened with my bank accounts,\u2019 things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What to know AI-enhanced phone scams are increasing in Toronto, with fraudsters using personal information scraped from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,19946,138291,102878,61,138292],"class_list":["post-309399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-scam","tag-scam-calls","tag-scammer","tag-technology","tag-toronto-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}