An investigation is underway after locks on a community mailbox were tampered with and several cheques went missing. CTV\u2019s Spencer Turcotte reports. <\/p>\n
An electrical contractor in Cambridge, Ont. says multiple business cheques worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were intercepted, altered and fraudulently deposited before reaching their intended recipients, prompting investigations by both the Waterloo Regional Police Service and Canada Post.<\/p>\n
Dan Howard, the president of Live Electric, said the issue started in late 2025 when payments from his clients failed to arrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had cheques mailed out, but we didn\u2019t receive them,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
At first, Howard believed the missing payments were an isolated incident. Then he followed up with clients and realized there was a bigger problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re up to maybe six or seven cheques,\u201d Howard said. \u201cThey\u2019re substantial. Some of them are close to a quarter million [dollars].\u201d<\/p>\n
The company also discovered the issue extended beyond incoming payments. Cheques that Live Electric mailed to other businesses failed to reach their destination, leaving tens of thousands of dollars unaccounted for.<\/p>\n
According to Howard, some of the missing cheques had been altered before they were deposited.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see how they\u2019ve changed the payable to another contracting name, but it\u2019s very visible,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty obvious to a regular person that the handwriting didn\u2019t match.\u201d<\/p>\n
Howard believes the cheques were intercepted after they were deposited at a community mailbox. He said neighbouring businesses experienced similar problems and they warned him not to use the mailbox.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were the first ones to be like, \u2018Oh yeah, don\u2019t use the mail. That\u2019s dangerous,\u2019\u201d Howard said.<\/p>\n
Canada Post confirmed to CTV News that the locks had been tampered with on the community mailbox.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we became aware of the issue, we immediately cleared the affected mailbox and replaced the locks on all five modules at the site as a precautionary measure. Since then, no further incidents have been reported,\u201d a statement from the Crown corporation said, in part.<\/p>\n
Police are also investigating.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaterloo Regional Police continue to see an increase in frauds targeting businesses across Waterloo Region, often involving sophisticated tactics designed to manipulate employees and exploit financial processes,\u201d they wrote, in part, in a statement to CTV News.<\/p>\n
Howard said the financial impact extends beyond his own company and could eventually drive up costs for other businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they can\u2019t get the money returned to the contractors or the developers or the subtrades, then they\u2019re going to work it into their overhead costs,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Until investigators determine who intercepted the cheques and how they were altered, Live Electric has stopped sending out payments in the mail.<\/p>\n
Instead, the company is hand-delivering and hand-collecting every cheque from customers and job sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An investigation is underway after locks on a community mailbox were tampered with and several cheques went missing.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[712,43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-772638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-apple-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772638","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=772638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}