In hindsight, Donna Rindress says there was a clear red flag during her taxi ride home last week that ended with her bank account drained and her life upended.
After a night out with friends, the Montreal woman hailed a cab at Bishop Street and Ste-Catherine Street West. She said the ride seemed completely normal — in fact, even better than usual.
“He was so nice. He was more helpful than any taxi driver I’ve ever had. Maybe that should have triggered something,” said Rindress, who uses an electric wheelchair that she said the driver helped fold up and fit into the vehicle.
She said the only unusual thing that happened appeared to be an innocuous technical difficulty with the cabbie’s credit card machine — a scam tactic she’s now warning others to be wary of.
“He said, ‘Oh I’m so sorry, my Visa machine isn’t working, but I can still take debit,'” said Rindress.
The driver then did what one bankers association says is happening more and more frequently. He took Rindress’s debit card, swiftly swapped it out for a nearly identical one and had her type her PIN into a fake payment machine to steal it.
Within an hour, almost $10,000 was removed from Rindress’s bank account without her believing anything to be amiss.
Fraudster spent $1,000 at dépanneur
Shortly after arriving home, Rindress began receiving text alerts from her bank, CIBC, notifying her of unusual activity on her account.
By the time she realized she’d been duped and managed to reach…
