

Chris Herhalt, CP24.com





A 44-year-old Scarborough man is facing more than 180 fraud charges in relation to a longstanding scheme that involved stealing taxi passenger’s debit cards.

Toronto police fraud investigators allege that starting sometime in the fall of 2015, a taxi driver would steal a debit card from a passenger as they were paying their fare.

Detectives say the taxi driver would switch the customer’s card with another card from the same financial institution.

Const. Jenniferjit Sidhu said the suspect used a device to extract the PIN number off of each card.

She said many victims came forward to police, all of them having ridden in a CO-OP taxi in the downtown area.

The taxi driver would then use the stolen debit card to withdraw cash from the victim’s account and make purchases at stores.

On Sept. 1, investigators conducted a search of a home in the area of St. Clair Avenue East and Brimley Road.

They allegedly found cash, a number of fake IDs, debit cards and a stolen SUV worth $70,000.

A man was arrested at the home.

He has been identified as Adnan Jahangir. His image was released by police on Thursday.

He appeared in court at College Park on Thursday morning.

Sidhu said investigators believe there are no other suspects outstanding at this point, but they are still working to determine if the fraud was part of a larger network.

The total amount of cash stolen is at least $100,000, Sidhu said.

Anyone with information about this scheme is asked to call police at 416-808-5200, 416-808-5100 or 416-808-1400.