Two NDG restaurants say they were victims of fraud

Two family-fun restaurants in NDG say their payment terminals were stolen and Montreal police is investigating.

Two family-run restaurants in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood say they were victims of an alleged fraud.

They both claim thieves stole their payment terminals and quickly withdrew thousands of dollars.

Gity Pour and her husband have owned The Oxford Café on Sherbrooke Street for 30 years. Their video surveillance camera shows that on July 2, a man came in right before closing time to get a take-out order and left quickly.

“By the time I went to my device for the transaction, I press it wasn’t working,” said Pour.

She called her contact person for the payment system on her clover brand terminal when she realized it had been compromised.

Charles Shefler, a sales agent for First Data, said the thief probably swapped the terminal.

“The thief had taken her terminal and replaced it with a stolen one, probably from another business he’s done this with,” said Shefler.

But Pour is down $2,000.

In May, a similar incident played out at The Sunshine Dumpling House in Monkland Village.

Owner Elise Feng said a man came in at closing time to place an order and stole her clover payment terminal. She said he left a different one in its place.

Feng noticed right away, yet within five minutes she was out $2,000.

She said the thief used the machine’s manual refund function, which can issue a refund of any amount to any debit card. Because it’s a debit card, and not a credit card, the transaction cannot be reversed.

Feng said she had to pay $600 for a new terminal, and Clover wants another $600 dollars for the stolen device.

CTV reached out to Clover, who said they have “industry-leading security features, including encryption, tamper resistance, and user authentication to prevent unauthorized access.”

“Business owners have full control over refund permissions — allowing organizations to disable refunds," it said in a statement.

Feng and Pour both say deactivating the manual refund option is difficult.

“I’m trying myself,” said Pour. “They referred me to my Clover account, it doesn’t give me any information how to disable this.”

Pour filed a police report. When contacted by CTV News, Montreal police said they have not made any arrests.

“I’m hoping that the police call Scotiabank and find out who this account belongs to, because that’s obviously the person who’s doing this,” said Shefler.

Both say they now treat the payment device like the cash drawer and never leave it in the open.