Police searching for 3 suspects in connection with Pizza Pizza fraud
Posted July 27, 2019 3:27 pm.
Last Updated July 27, 2019 11:18 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Toronto police are looking to identify three men wanted in connection with a scheme that defrauded Pizza Pizza customers.
A number of customers contacted CityNews over a week ago, saying their debit cards were swapped and stolen while making payments during home deliveries. They allege thousands of dollars were taken from their bank accounts just hours after they ordered Pizza Pizza to their homes.
Police say after the pizza orders were placed, they were then intercepted by a group of at least three men who would then deliver the pizza’s to the intended customers.
When the victims went to pay using their debit cards, police said they were presented with a fraudulent machine that would either stop working or get left in the pizza delivery car, prompting one of the suspects to take the machine – along with victims’ debit cards – back to their car, compromising their cards.
Once out of view, police say one of the suspects switched the debit card with a similar looking, non-active card that they would hand back to the victims.
The suspects would then go to a nearby ATM and conduct fraudulent banking transactions.
It wasn’t until the customers were notified through their banks that they realized, their accounts had been compromised.
“Everything that was in my account was gone, except for $9,” customer Arantes Harris told CityNews. “There’s no words to really describe it really.”
Raihan Shirazi, another customer who contacted CityNews, expressed a similar sentiment when learning of the fraud.
“I’ve never been in this situation — so first thing I said is: am I gonna get my money back? Right now I have basically negative $899.”
Shirazi, who was able to identify one of the men wanted by police as the delivery driver who came to his home, says he has since been reimbursed for the money which was stolen from his bank account.
Pizza Pizza told CityNews it was cooperating with the investigation and have adjusted operational procedures to ensure this type of fraud doesn’t happen again.
