Scammers posing as banks and telecom carriers are getting better at sounding real, and Toronto police say artificial intelligence is helping them do it. Impersonation now accounts for about one in six of the roughly 17,000 fraud reports the service has taken so far this year, a problem that sits alongside carrier tools meant to flag spoofed and suspicious calls.
More than $50 million had already been stolen by mid-October, Det. David Coffey of the Toronto Police Service Financial Crimes Unit told Breakfast Television, according to CityNews on Wednesday.
“It’s our number one type of fraud that we see and it really covers such a wide range of different types of scams, but it’s devastating to people,” Coffey said.
Callers may already know your name, which bank you use, and even the last four digits of a card. That detail, pulled together with AI from social media, phishing and past data breaches, is used to push people into panic and get them to withdraw cash or hand over codes.
The script changes, but the pressure does not. Someone claims to be from your bank, a wireless carrier, a government office or another trusted brand. They invent an urgent threat, then cast themselves as the only way out. Coffey said the goal is to put people in an emotional state and then offer the answer to that emergency.
“It’s emotions that they target in these people and it’s very effective,” he said.
Similar tricks show up in other Canadian warnings, from spoofed police numbers to fake texts that try to pull you into a chat. Carriers have added their own layers, including spam labels and packages such as Telus Scam Protection with Norton, but those tools cannot catch every call or text that looks legitimate on the surface.
Coffey’s advice is simple: treat urgency as a red flag, not a reason to move faster. Hang up. Do not stay on the line while the caller “verifies” anything for you. Call the bank, carrier or agency back using a number on your card, statement, bill or the official website you typed yourself.
Banks and wireless carriers will not ask you to read out a one-time passcode from a text so they can “secure” your account. They will not demand that you withdraw cash, buy gift cards or move money into a “safe” account on the spot. If a message creates fear and then offers an immediate fix, end the contact and check through a channel you control.
On an iPhone, Silence Unknown Callers and the carrier’s spam or fraud labels can cut down noise, but they are not a substitute for hanging up and verifying. Report impersonation attempts to your local police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre so the pattern is on record.
Beyond hanging up and calling the number yourself, some apps now screen scam calls and texts before you engage. NordVPN recently brought message protection and its free HangUp call blocker to iPhone, which we covered when those tools arrived for Canadians.
Message protection lives in the NordVPN app and flags suspicious texts from unknown senders, while HangUp sorts incoming calls into categories such as scam or telemarketing so you can silence whole groups before the phone rings. HangUp works with a free Nord account and does not require a paid VPN plan.
At this point, the safest plan might be to never answer your phone, never reply to a text message and never click a link again, because apparently that is what owning a smartphone in 2026 has come to.
Would a caller knowing your name and the last four digits of your card be enough to make you pause, or would you still stay on the line?
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