An electrical contractor in Cambridge, Ont. says multiple business cheques worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were intercepted, altered and fraudulently deposited before reaching their intended recipients, prompting investigations by both the Waterloo Regional Police Service and Canada Post.
Dan Howard, the president of Live Electric, said the issue started in late 2025 when payments from his clients failed to arrive.
“We had cheques mailed out, but we didn’t receive them,” he recalled.
At first, Howard believed the missing payments were an isolated incident. Then he followed up with clients and realized there was a bigger problem.
“I think we’re up to maybe six or seven cheques,” Howard said. “They’re substantial. Some of them are close to a quarter million [dollars].”
The company also discovered the issue extended beyond incoming payments. Cheques that Live Electric mailed to other businesses failed to reach their destination, leaving tens of thousands of dollars unaccounted for.
According to Howard, some of the missing cheques had been altered before they were deposited.
“You can see how they’ve changed the payable to another contracting name, but it’s very visible,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious to a regular person that the handwriting didn’t match.”
Howard believes the cheques were intercepted after they were deposited at a community mailbox. He said neighbouring businesses experienced similar problems and they warned him not to use the mailbox.
“They were the first ones to be like, ‘Oh yeah, don’t use the mail. That’s dangerous,’” Howard said.
Canada Post confirmed to CTV News that the locks had been tampered with on the community mailbox.
“Once we became aware of the issue, we immediately cleared the affected mailbox and replaced the locks on all five modules at the site as a precautionary measure. Since then, no further incidents have been reported,” a statement from the Crown corporation said, in part.
Police are also investigating.
“Waterloo Regional Police continue to see an increase in frauds targeting businesses across Waterloo Region, often involving sophisticated tactics designed to manipulate employees and exploit financial processes,” they wrote, in part, in a statement to CTV News.
Howard said the financial impact extends beyond his own company and could eventually drive up costs for other businesses.
“If they can’t get the money returned to the contractors or the developers or the subtrades, then they’re going to work it into their overhead costs,” he explained.
Until investigators determine who intercepted the cheques and how they were altered, Live Electric has stopped sending out payments in the mail.
Instead, the company is hand-delivering and hand-collecting every cheque from customers and job sites.
