Club Monaco has asked the RCMP to investigate a possible privacy breach involving the credit card numbers of some of its shoppers.

The fashion retailer was notified of the problem late last year by a credit card processor, reports The Globe and Mail.

The company immediately hired a forensic firm to help the Mounties with their probe. Banks and other card issuers were also told of the problem and have been sifting through client records looking for signs of fraud, sources in the financial community told The Globe.

While the company is yet to determine how many shoppers may have been affected, investigators have found no direct evidence suggesting that a breach occurred, a company spokesperson said Thursday.

"We've been told through the report thus far that our systems are very secure," Wendy Smith told The Globe, adding that the data being looked at does not include client names, addresses or phone numbers. "It's an active investigation."

The retailer has 67 stores in North America but the security issue only involves 28 outlets in Canada, said Smith.

The news follows other incidents of security fraud at two major companies in Canada.

TJX Cos., the U.S. parent of Winners and HomeSense, announced last week that their computer systems had been hacked. This week, it was confirmed that fraudulent activity had occurred on the accounts of thousands of Canadian credit-card holders who had shopped at the stores.

Also last week, Canada's privacy commissioner and police announced that they were probing a possible security breach at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce after the bank announced that a backup computer file, containing information linked to almost half a million clients, had gone missing.

The file includes information related to the process used to open and administer about 470,000 current and former Talvest Mutual Funds client accounts.

Unlike TJX and CIBC, Club Monaco did not make a public statement about the potential security problem. Under Canadian law, companies are not required to tell customers if their security systems have been compromised; however, Ottawa has come under pressure to change that.

With files from The Canadian Press