A local currency exchange business is taking extra steps to protect themselves from fraud as they open a new location. CanAm Currency Exchange celebrated the grand opening of its new location on Tuesday night, but President and CEO Michael Piccioni says the company has also been focused on strengthening their fraud prevention measures. In April 2024, a man accused of fraudulently trying to purchase a gold bar was arrested and charged. In May 2025, two separate incidents involving fraudulent Canadian passports resulted in losses totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Piccioni says the company now has additional checks in place to verify transactions, and that fraud remains a concern across the financial industry, particularly with the rise in cyber attacks. He says they’ve learned a lot since those incidents to ensure it doesn’t happen again. “We’ve changed our policies. We’ve updated everything. At the end of the day in this business, it’s not risk-free. You’re going to take on some risk. And we learned the hard way. But fortunately, I think it was an advantage that we went through that early on in this stage. And now we’ve set policies in place where those types of things can’t happen.” Piccioni says they’ve made changes in how they do business due to an increase of fraud everywhere. “We have policies in place again to prevent ourselves from, like for example, we won’t respond to emails if somebody wants to book a trade. We have to talk to the person either over the phone or in person to verify those trades. So we have policies in place to make sure that we don’t get defrauded for sure.” Meanwhile, despite the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade war, Piccioni says the business continues to see strong demand for currency exchange. He says they are still seeing the demand despite the trade war with the U.S. “Fortunately, we deal with businesses, importers, exporters, and people that work in the States... a lot of cross-border workers, nurses, engineers. So that’s a big part of our clientele. And then the travellers, they’re still travelling. I mean, we’re seeing record numbers when it comes to going to Europe. They’re still going to the U.S., they’re still going to Florida, they’re still doing their trips. Yes, there might be a little bit of a decline, but I’ll be honest with you, we’re not really seeing it too much.” CanAm Currency was previously located in the 3200 block of Dougall Avenue. That location recently closed, and the new location is within the 3800 block of Dougall Avenue near Cabana Road. CanAm Currency first opened in 2017 and offers dozens of currency options.
