A CANADIAN pharmacy has been forced to warn patients about a telephone scam with the caller claiming to need credit card information to pay for their medicines before picking them up at the store.
The scam emerged after patients contacted the owner reporting that they had received calls from an individual claiming to be their pharmacist and that their script was ready, before asking for a credit card payment.
The owner told YorkRegion.com that while the pharmacy did take payments over the phone, the calls "didn't come from us".
He added that calls from the store would not come "out of the blue", urging patients to always double-check who was calling before releasing personal information.
The pharmacist said the store had posted a warning about the scam calls, noting elderly people were particularly vulnerable to con-artists.
Scamwatch has said there has been a 55% increase in reports involving loss of personal information this year compared with the same period in 2019.
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