Toronto Hydro warning customers of new phone scam

It turns out pre-recorded offers of free cruises and plasma screens aren’t earning the hardworking scam artists of Toronto enough these days. Luckily, they’ve found a new market niche – posing as collection agents for the billing department at Toronto Hydro.

Victim of the calls are being told they’ll have their electricity cut off if they don’t fork over the funds immediately via a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer.

“They're calling from a 1-800 number and by the looks of it they’re using the name of the local utility and posing as their termination department,” Brian Buchan, spokesperson for Toronto Hydro told Yahoo Canada Finance. “We've been trying to do some analysis and we can’t detect that they have any inside information about our customers – it looks like they’re just going into the phone book and placing (random) phone calls.”

The odds are in a scammer's favour with the utility provider supplying 734,000 Torontonians and approximately 18 per cent of the electricity consumed in Ontario.

Toronto Hydro first got wind of the scam in June and issued an alert.

“We'd actually been monitoring the situation because we had heard that the same issue was occurring in some states and had moved to Thunder Bay,” says Buchan.

He points out that the utility distributor doesn’t ask for “pre-paid credit card payment or wire transfer in overdue account situations” and the customer care department doesn’t even have a 1-800 number. Instead, tardy customers are more likely to get several automated phone messages and hand delivered notices prior to being disconnected.

If customers do get a sketchy call, Toronto Hydro asks that they contact Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre immediately at 1-888-495-8501.

“Quote the file number (844396) so it can be properly tracked,” Buchan adds.

Perhaps it goes without saying but if you do get a call that sounds too good to be true or remotely sketchy, be sure to double check that the caller is who they say they are.