Scams keep changing, but the emotional pressure behind many frauds is strikingly consistent: gain trust, trigger fear and keep the target from slowing down long enough to question what is happening.
That pattern is drawing renewed attention in Toronto, where Det. Dave Coffey of the police service’s central fraud office says investigators receive about 50 fraud reports a day. CBC reported that Toronto residents have reported nearly $224 million in fraud losses so far this year and are on pace to lose $560 million in 2026, more than $130 million above last year’s total.
The scale is likely larger than official numbers show. Nationally, reported losses to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reached more than $704 million last year, but the centre estimates only five to 10 per cent of fraud is reported. Its figures also do not include police reports from services such as Toronto police or the Ontario Provincial Police.
The pattern behind the pitch
Coffey pointed to a recent $20,000 fraud reported to Toronto police as a typical example. It began with a call to a victim at work from someone claiming to be a bank employee. The caller knew the victim’s name, the last four digits of an account and the victim’s address.
That information is used to create credibility quickly, said Martina Dove, a researcher and author of The Psychology of Fraud, Persuasion and Scam Techniques . If a caller appears legitimate at the start, the person receiving the call may be less likely to look for warning signs.
In the Toronto case described by Coffey, the caller then asked about suspicious transactions and suggested the recipient of the money was linked to money laundering. The fear of being implicated became the lever. Dove said strong emotional states can make people more impulsive and less able to recall information or think critically in the moment.
The next step, experts say, is isolation. Coffey said the victim was kept on the phone for four hours. Dove said fraudsters often try to prevent a target from calling a friend, checking with an institution or simply pausing. In this case, Coffey said the victim ultimately withdrew money from his own account, his mother’s account and a home equity line of credit, for a total of $20,000.
The simplest interruption
Coffey and Dove both said fraud prevention cannot rely only on memorizing specific scam scripts, because the stories change constantly. The more durable warning sign is emotional urgency — a call, message or request that suddenly makes someone feel scared, anxious, excited or under pressure to act.
Dove recommends setting rules in advance for high-pressure situations, such as ending a call that claims to be from a bank and calling the bank back through an official number. Coffey offered the same basic advice: hang up and independently contact the institution, police or agency the caller claims to represent.
That pause may not end fraud altogether, Coffey said, but experts argue it can break the emotional momentum scammers depend on before a victim is pushed into an irreversible decision.
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