Sarnia-area pharmacy and police warn about phone scam

The owner of Hogan Pharmacy and city police are warning Sarnia-area residents that someone is falsely using the company’s name as part of a scam.

Sarnia police issued a statement Thursday urging residents to be aware of a scam where callers identify themselves as being with Hogan Pharmacy and ask for credit card information to process an order.

“Should you receive a call with such a request please hang up immediately and do not provide them with any of your personal information,” police said. “If you have any questions please hang up and call the store directly yourself to speak with the pharmacy team.”

Darryl Moore, owner of Hogan Pharmacy, said he’s concerned about elderly customers “falling prey” to this fraud.

He said the company became aware, “in Petrolia, especially, there’s people out of the blue getting phone calls and some of them are coming up with call display saying ‘Hogan Pharmacy.’”

The callers claim they have a delivery to make and need the person’s name and credit card information, Moore said.

“We don’t do that,” he said. “We don’t solicit credit card information over the phone.”

Moore said they’ve heard from about a dozen individuals about the calls since Monday and the company initially contacted the OPP. He also reached out to police in Sarnia, where the company has locations.

“I’m sure if it’s going on in Petrolia it would be going on here (Sarnia) as well,” he said. “We have a lot of elderly clientele we do deliver for and probably won’t know any differently when they see Hogan Pharmacy coming up on their phone that it’s not us calling.”

“We were just really concerned so we wanted to get that public message out there” so no one falls victim to the scam, he said.

“They’re obviously spoofing our number,” he said about calls reported where Hogan Pharmacy appears in the call display.

“Others are just coming up ‘unknown name, unknown number,’” he added.

Moore said the pharmacy was made aware of individuals who aren’t customers of the store being contacted.

As of Thursday, the company hadn’t been made aware of anyone who has been fooled by the scam.

Moore said it’s the first time the company has been subject of a scam like this.

“Scams take on many forms and this is just another example of one taking place in our community,” police said.

It is urging the public to “always hang up and call back the company you are dealing with” after after first looking up the phone number and not using the number of the call they received.

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