Several Ottawa restaurants have been targeted by scammers posing as health inspectors.
In a typical fraud, the phoney official contacts a restaurant and solicits sensitive banking and financial information about the business. Sometimes they threaten a restaurant with fines if the manager doesn’t call a given phone number and enter particular codes. In other variations, an eatery manager is told to expect an automated call and to dial a code when it comes.
The scammer uses the information and phone confirmations to set up fake sales on online sites like eBay, Craigslist and Kijiji from which they pocket the cash and never supply any goods.