Service animals are often a critical support for people with different disabilities. But fake service animals and their owners are taking advantage of the system, and cause huge issues for people with legitimate needs.
When Alex Gorodetsky received a text message on his cellphone inquiring about a pair of shoes he posted on online classified website Kijiji, he had no reason to believe the person texting him was a scam artist. “In a nutshell the text basically asked me if I could ship a particular pair of sneakers to western Africa,” said Gorodetsky, an avid shoe collector living in Toronto. “At first I thought everything was all good up until I got the exact same text message two more times that day.”
One arrest has been made in connection with an alleged Scarborough criminal organization that is reported to have collected thousands of dollars by orchestrating car collisions in order to make fraudulent claims.