Impersonation scams are on the rise and culprits are utilizing artificial intelligence to more convincingly dupe victims, a detective with the Toronto Police Service’s Financial Crimes Unit told Breakfast Television on Wednesday.Det. David Coffey says so far this year TPS has received around 17,000 fraud reports and one in six are now impersonation scams where suspects portray themselves as agents from legitimate organizations.As of mid-October, over $50 million has been stolen.“It’s our number one type of fraud that we see and it really covers such a wide range of different types of scams, but it’s devastating to people,” Coffey said.“A person will receive a phone call and because of artificial intelligence when they call now they know more about us, they know our name, they know what bank they use, they may know the last four digits of our bank card, so they utilize that information to convince people and compel them to go down and withdraw all their money …”While individual scams may differ, they all seem to follow a similar theme, Coffey said, creating a sense of fear and urgency in victims.“They are getting people into an emotional state using social engineering, and then they provide themselves as the answer to that panic and that emergency,” he said.“It’s emotions that they target in these people and it’s very effective.”Coffey says in these circumstances, fear is actually your friend.“If you receive a phone call and you’re immediately fearful and you’re panicking because of what somebody is telling you, the most important thing for people to do is pause, recognize the urgency as a red flag,” he advised.“Urgency to me means slow down, it doesn’t mean speed up — pause, hang up the phone and then do your own verification, don’t let the caller do the verification for you because they are obviously going to verify it themselves. “So, hang up, disconnect, call the bank, call the police, call whatever industry has reached out to you to verify it independently.”