Amazon rejects plea to stop selling taxi roof signs as cab scam spreads across Canada

After a long day at a work event in July, Kathryn Kozodi was relieved when she spotted a car with a lit-up taxi sign. 

She thought it was odd when the driver told her she'd have to pay her fare with a debit card. Still, a tired Kozodi hopped in the car. 

"I was like, 'Fine, it's kind of weird, but let's go home,'" said Kozodi, who lives in Calgary. 

Nothing else seemed off — until the next day when she discovered that almost $2,000 was missing from her bank account. On top of that, her debit card had someone else's name on it. 

Kozodi concluded that the taxi driver was a fraudster who, during the debit card transaction, recorded her PIN, stole her card and handed her back a fake. 

"I started freaking out," she said. "It's terrifying when they have your debit card."

It took Kozodi about two weeks to get her money back from her bank, and she's still rattled by the experience. 

"It really felt like an invasion of privacy and a violation to be a victim of this scam," she said. "I really don't want it to happen to anybody else."

The taxi scam isn't new; Toronto and Montreal have been seeing it for years. But the crime is becoming more widespread.

This summer, police in Calgary, Edmonton and at least five cities in southern Ontario, including Kingston and Ottawa, posted warnings online that they had received multiple reports of the scam. 

Police and the Canadian Taxi Association say the fraudsters have a helping hand: with the click of a button, they can purchase a generic — but official looking — taxi roof sign on e-commerce sites like Amazon. 

The taxi association has asked Amazon, by far Canada's most popular online shopping site, to stop making the roof signs so easily available.

"They do have a moral responsibility to at least sell the signs to individuals that are properly licensed," said association president Marc André Way.

However, the U.S.-based company continues to sell the product to all customers.