Point-of-sale terminal scam bilks Brampton restaurant of $4,600

Sabena Coulter was set up by cyber thieves and now she’s out nearly $5,000.

Last November, three male diners pulled a dine-and-dash at her Brampton restaurant — eating expensive meals without paying.

A few days later they came back to settle the bill.

“My faith in humanity was restored,” said Coulter, who owns Fanzorelli’s, an established Italian restaurant and wine bar in downtown Brampton.

But now it appears the ruse was all intended to get a closer look at the restaurant’s point-of-sale terminals, the kind given to diners to process credit card and debit card transactions.

One day in early December, one of the trio came back again and dropped off a lookalike terminal, lifting one of Coulter’s at the same time.

Within minutes, scammers used it to go on a stealing spree at Coulter’s expense. Manipulating the terminal, they orchestrated a series of refunds to themselves from her merchant account.

“Five different cards, 11 transactions,” Coulter explained, providing a list of each one.

In a matter of hours, they had stolen just over $4,600.

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“That’s a week’s worth of wages,” Coulter said, pointing out she has a staff of 17 full-time and part-time staff to pay, plus food and other overhead, in a highly-competitive industry.

“I’m not a mom-and-pop operation, I am a mama operation,” she said, describing how she frequently toils seven days a week in the business, a restaurant where she once worked as a server before buying it from the previous owner.

“Some people out there think they can do it and it is wrong,” she said, referring to the theft. “I want everyone to know.”

After it was detected, she contacted Peel Regional Police, who are currently investigating.

She also spoke to Global Payments Inc., the multi-national company that she pays to handle point-of-sale transactions.

The company quizzed Coulter about whether she had password-protected her terminals, which she had.

VIDEO: Restaurants warn businesses of potential scam

“I’m the only person with the code,” Coulter told Global News, adamant that she did everything possible to safeguard her account.

Even so, Global Payments is holding her liable for the loss.

Contacted by Global News several times, Global Payments, based in Atlanta, issued a written statement.

“We appreciate Global TV News Canada’s efforts to shed light on a common issue so others can take steps to avoid falling victim to it in the future. Our fraud team is currently working to assist the customer profiled in your recent story and we are also working with law enforcement officials to assist in their investigation as needed,” wrote Kim Mann, the company’s vice-president of corporate relations.

A senior police detective, who heard of Coulter’s situation through her social media post, encouraged her to call Global News in an effort to expose the theft scam and relay her difficulty getting reimbursed.

Toronto police reported the theft of another point-of-sale terminal at a restaurant in Scarborough following a large birthday party in December. When it came time to pay, a man in his 20s disappeared with the device.

Coulter is grateful for the support she’s received from restaurant clients following the events.

She believes Global Payments should take responsibility for the loss because there was nothing she could do to defend herself. She’s since taken steps to make the terminals more difficult to steal.