February 22, 2020 – The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) released the Financial Crime Trend Bulletin for 2019. The new data shows the top 10 most reported frauds as well as the top 10 frauds based on dollar loss in 2019.
The CAFC received 46,465 fraud reports from Canadian consumers and businesses in 2019. These scams produced 19,285 Canadian victims of fraud with a total reported loss of $96,163,328.64. However, the CAFC believes that the actual numbers are much higher since less than 5 percent of fraud victims report their occurrences to the agency.
Top 10 frauds affecting Canadians ranked by number of reports
Top 10 frauds affecting Canadians ranked by dollar loss
The CAFC has provided the following tips to help protect yourself from fraud.
- Create strong passwords for each of your accounts.
- Setup multi-factor authentication to make it more difficult for someone else to access your access your accounts.
- Update the privacy settings attached to your social network accounts.
- Be familiar with the terms of service and how payment methods work before you using them. Look for a fraud protection policy.
- Never, under any circumstance, accept money and send money to a third party. You may, unknowingly, be participating in money laundering which is a criminal offence.
- Avoid reacting automatically. Take five minutes to ask additional questions and listen to your instincts. If something doesn’t seem right, as someone else about it.
- Remain current on frauds and protect others by sharing what you know. Tell two other and ask them to do the same. An unbroken chain of 25 people telling two would cover the entire population of Canada.
- Do not trust the information on your call display because it can easily be manipulated.
- Do not provide your personal or financial information on demand.
- Do not open an attachment or click a link in a unsolicited email or text message.
The CAFC just released it's lists of Top 10 most reported frauds & Top 10 frauds based on dollar loss. The bulletin also includes the top tips to protect yourself. #Take5 to read through the bulletin and #Tell2 to protect many!#kNOwfraud#showmetheFRAUDhttps://t.co/LRa2LX42vh pic.twitter.com/tXFw8Okm7G
— Canadian Anti-Fraud / En français: @antifraudecan (@canantifraud) February 17, 2020

Marina Burghard writes for Canadian Fraud News about fraud-related cases, whistleblower, jurisdiction, identity theft, consumer protection, etc. – essentially about scams and how to protect yourself against this kind of fraudulent criminal behavior. She holds a Master’s degree in Political Science where her interest in criminology grew. Besides fraud, Marina’s scientific interest lies in terrorism, extremism and how to deal with it as a society.