‘It’s very effective’: Impersonation scams aided by artificial intelligence on the rise, police detective says
Posted October 28, 2026 3:45 pm.
Last Updated October 28, 2026 3:47 pm.
Impersonation scams are becoming more common, and criminals are using artificial intelligence (AI) to trick people more easily. A detective from the Toronto Police Service’s Financial Crimes Unit told Breakfast Television about the problem on Wednesday.
Detective David Coffey says the Toronto Police Service (TPS) has received about 17,000 fraud reports so far this year. One in six of these reports involves impersonation scams, where criminals pretend to work for real organizations that people trust.
By the middle of October, more than $50 million had been stolen.
“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.
“A person will receive a phone call and because of artificial intelligence when they call now they know more about us, they know our name, they know what bank they use, they may know the last four digits of our bank card, so they utilize that information to convince people and compel them to go down and withdraw all their money …”
Coffey said these scams can look different, but they usually follow the same pattern. Scammers make people feel afraid and believe they must act right away.
“They are getting people into an emotional state using social engineering, and then they provide themselves as the answer to that panic and that emergency,” he said.
“It’s emotions that they target in these people and it’s very effective.”
Coffey says that in these situations, fear can actually help protect you.
“If you receive a phone call and you’re immediately fearful and you’re panicking because of what somebody is telling you, the most important thing for people to do is pause, recognize the urgency as a red flag,” he advised.
“Urgency to me means slow down, it doesn’t mean speed up — pause, hang up the phone and then do your own verification, don’t let the caller do the verification for you because they are obviously going to verify it themselves. So, hang up, disconnect, call the bank, call the police, call whatever industry has reached out to you to verify it independently.”