Saskatoon business owner warns of utility scam attempt

A Saskatoon business owner is warning people after he was targeted by a phone scam involving a utility company threatening to shut off power unless he paid by cash in person.

Francis Nguyen, owner of Franky’s Banh Mi, and Franky’s Pho downtown, said one of his employees received a call from someone identifying themselves as a technician for Saskatoon Light & Power. before 5 p.m. on Friday Oct. 18, saying they were on the way to the restaurant to shut off the lights.

“I was like, ‘What? This doesn’t make any sense,’” Nguyen said. He then called the 1-800 number provided that appeared to be the utility’s main phone line.

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The woman who answered asked for his account number and confirmed that Nguyen owed money to the company.

“I was arguing with her because I was holding the utility bill and everything was up to date,” Nguyen said.

Saskatoon Light & Power is owned by the City of Saskatoon, and Nguyen told the woman that he intended to follow up with City Hall the following Monday. However, the woman insisted that the bill needed to be paid immediately.

“She told me that I owed $1500 to the power company and if I didn’t clear it up right now, I wasn’t going to have power for the remainder of the day, and the weekend,” he said.

“In the moment we were quite in a panic… because … you don’t want your business to be shut down for the weekend for a clerical error,” he said.

The woman continued to assert that Nguyen owed $1500, and gave him an address to a business on Preston Avenue to meet. Nguyen’s wife took over the phone, and they both headed to the business.

“They had instructions for us. We needed the utility bill, and we needed to come in, and they needed the barcode off of the utility bill to get this thing paid,” Nguyen explained.

Before any interaction, Nguyen’s wife had the idea to tell the woman on the phone that her husband is a police officer, which abruptly ended the call.

Nguyen said he then called the police to file a complaint.

“It’s a good scam, I guess, because it got me pretty good,” he said.

In August, the City of Saskatoon issued a warning about a similar phone scam, saying, several concerned business owners had reached out regarding the issue at the time.

The city says credit card or bank account information is never requested by phone, text or email.

“These types of demanding ‘pay-or-have-your-power-cut-off’ phone messages, robocalls, texts or emails are never sent from the City of Saskatoon, or Saskatoon Light & Power,” they said in an emailed statement, adding that people should never give out personal banking or credit card information over the phone, by text or email and block suspicious phone numbers.

If you receive a call believed to be suspicious contact City of Saskatoon customer service at 306-975-2400.

650 CKOM has also reached out to Saskatoon Police for comment, but had not received a reply by the time of publication.

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