Mississauga resident dodges pizza delivery scam in Costco parking lot

The Dominos pizza scam previously reported by police continues in Mississauga with a man reporting an attempted scam last night.

Toronto Police and Peel Regional Police put out a warning about pizza delivery scams on Apr. 18. They described a string of such incidents across Toronto. In each, a woman would approach a targeted victim and tell them she had ordered a pizza.

However, the story goes the delivery driver would not take her cash, only plastic which she does not have. She asked the target to pay for the pizza in exchange for her cash. If the target agrees, the counterfeit customer escorts the target to a man posing as a pizza delivery driver in his car.

The driver has a PIN machine which has been modified to record the inserted PIN numbers. The woman gives the target her cash, but when the driver moves to return the target’s card he replaces it with a double. The pair now have the target’s card and PIN code.

Following Insauga’s first story about this new scam, a reader saw the piece and learned of the scam. The reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, went to the Costco at 3180 Laird Rd. in Mississauga around 6 p.m. on Apr. 24 when this warning would become valuable.

He was approached by a woman in the Costco parking lot, near the propane station, while taking his groceries to his car. She asked him if he spoke Punjabi to “make a personal touch,” the reader described. She then explained that she’d ordered a pizza, but the driver would not accept her cash, which she showed the reader.

The reader said she pulled out a very small hand wallet full of $20 bills. The woman claimed she would give the reader some of this cash if he paid for her pizza. “I didn’t know what to do as I knew the story of people helping and then getting their accounts cleaned,” he wrote.

He said he began to yell at the woman telling her he knew this was a scam technique and he would be calling the police. The woman “calmly” walked away from him. She approached a white car with a Dominos pizza logo on the rear left window. The driver lowered his window to speak with her and after a brief exchange, she got in the car which drove off.

The reader called Peel Regional Police but was initially put on hold. He eventually hung up, but later called back and was rushed through when he called a second time. He also reported the incident to Peel Crime Stoppers.

He describes the woman as a Punjabi-speaking South Asian in her late 20s or early 30s. She stand 5-foot-5 and has a light complexion.

Anyone with information about this rash of scams can call Peel police at 905-453-3311, or Crime Stoppers anonymously at (905) 455-8477.