'I'm pretty sure I got scammed': Calgary woman victim of a fake taxi

Kathryn Kozody's final Stampede weekend didn't end the way she expected it to. On her way home from a work event, with her phone battery almost dead, she opted to take a cab she saw on the street.

"The first kind of red flag — retroactively, looking back — was that he said debit only," Kozody said, referring to the cab driver. "And I said, 'Well, what about credit?' And he said, 'Nope, no credit, only debit.'"

Kozody didn't think anything of it and took the cab, only to discover the next day $2,000 had been withdrawn from her bank account, and the debit card she had wasn't hers. 

"You're in such shock, but it just hit me, 'I'm pretty sure I got scammed.'"

Kozody was the victim of a fake taxi cab scam — and she isn't the only one. 

The Calgary Police Service (CPS) said Friday that five taxi cab scams had been reported.

Staff Sgt. Brad Moore, with the general investigations unit, said Tuesday they now have nine reports, citing Stampede as an opportune time for scammers to take advantage of people like Kozody who were trying to get home. 

"Things like the Stampede bring a lot of people to town that are taxing the system for transportation," Moore said. "It becomes a bit of a crime of opportunity, so to speak."

The Edmonton Police Service has also reported taxi cab scams, and the Toronto Police Service's financial crimes unit noted in January that taxi scams since June 2023 had resulted in over $40,000 in losses. 

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reports15,941 victims of all types of fraud in Canada so far this year, as of June 30. By the end of 2023, there were 41,988 victims.

According to CPS's Q4 report for last year, 555 incidents of credit card fraud were reported in 2023. Moore said that while they are not necessarily seeing an increase in the number of cases, fraud reports are frequent.

Moore said it is important to remember that scam taxis are not legitimate cab companies or services such as Uber, where a customer books a ride ahead of time. 

Typically, Moore said, the scams involve two people — a driver and someone asking for help paying for a cab that doesn't take cash. The driver will then take the victim's debit or credit card, put it through a modified point-of-sale system that records their PIN and then swap their real card with a fake one. 

In Kozody's case, no one approached her. She and a friend used the cab after seeing someone else get out.