Dan Payne struggles to raise money to feed the homeless population through his Montreal charity, DIFY.

“The first year I had to pay everything out of my pocket,” he told Global News from his home office in the city’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (NDG) neighbourhood.

So he was overjoyed when, a week ago, someone sent an email offering to make a $2,500 donation to the charity. With that amount, Payne said he could feed 3,000 people.

“I’m a good shopper,” he quipped.

After he replied to the would-be donor, the charity got a followup email from them with an offer of even more money.

“‘We’re gonna send you actually $5,000 and we’d like you to give the $2,500 to a needy mother with a sick child,’” Payne said, quoting the message.

The retiree said that’s when he became suspicious. A few days afterwards, the charity got a delivery via FedEx — a cheque for $5,000 supposedly issued by a company in Ontario. The document had the company’s name and address, but with a slightly modified logo.

A company representative refused to be interviewed.

After the cheque was delivered, Payne recalled, the scammer contacted him numerous times expressing urgency. That’s a common technique fraudsters use, according to Terry Cutler, who runs cybersecurity company Cyology Labs.

“They use a sense of urgency to make you do stuff that you’re not supposed to do,” he explained. “That’s why it’s important you take a step back, breathe.”

Refusing to take the bait, Payne said he exercised due diligence and contacted a representative at the Ontario company named on the cheque.

“They got back to me and said it was fraudulent,” Payne recalled.

Cutler explained that these kinds of cheque fraud have been happening for years. The scammer issues a cheque to the target person or organization, then asks for a refund or, as in Payne’s case, asks for some of the cash to be given to a third party.

The problem is that it takes banks days to clear cheques after deposit, even if the account says the funds are available, Cutler pointed out.

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“You go and refund the person, but then you realize shortly after that, that the cheque bounced,” he said.

So the victim loses the cash.

In their 2024 annual report, Montreal police state the number of fraud cases in their territory rose from 2,417 in 2019 to 11,617 in 2024.

“The increase in the number of frauds reported to the SPVM in 2024 can be attributed mainly to more incidents of card fraud (for example, bank card) and computer fraud,” the report states.

Organizations of all stripes are targeted. But community workers like David Chapman, executive director of Resilience Montreal, which serves the unhoused community, stressed that it’s their organizations that have the most to lose.

“Fraudsters picking on community organizations which are working with marginalized populations — it’s pretty much the low of the low,” he stated.

He told Global News that he’s seen a growth in the number of phishing attempts targeting his organization, which has forced staff to be more vigilant.

“You have to spend money to protect yourself from this,” he said.

Funds, he and others point out, that could be spent on potentially saving someone’s life.

Payne said he reported his incident to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

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