Scammed in Canada: How to Get Your Money Back

Someone has your money and you want it back. In Canada, whether that happens turns on one question, and it isn’t how much you lost or how convincing the scam was. It’s whether the money was taken from you or sent by you. If a stranger used your card or got into your account, the law is largely on your side. If a scammer talked you into pressing send yourself, no Canadian rule makes your bank pay you back. Both cases have a path, and in both of them the first hour matters most.

Can you get your money back after a scam in Canada?

Sometimes, and it depends on which kind of scam it was. Unauthorized transactions, where someone used your card or account without permission, carry real legal protection: a maximum of $50 on a credit card unless you were grossly negligent, and on a debit card you should get the money back as long as you protected your PIN. Payments you were tricked into making get none of that protection. Your bank may still refund you, but it isn’t required to.

The reasoning behind it is simple, even where the result feels unfair. When a criminal takes the money, the bank’s security is what failed. When you were manipulated into paying, the payment carries your own approval. Every rule below follows from which side of that line you’re on.

This isn’t a rare thing to be dealing with. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre logged over 112,000 reports and more than $704 million in reported losses in 2025 (opens in a new tab), with investment fraud alone at $351 million, about half the total. A federal regulatory filing puts that at nearly a 300 per cent increase over 2020 (opens in a new tab), and quotes the centre’s own estimate that only 5 to 10 per cent of fraud gets reported at all. Most people never tell anyone.

What to do in the first hour

Speed is the one part of this you control. Money that’s still sitting in the receiving account can sometimes be frozen. Money that’s been moved on is usually gone.

Call your bank’s fraud line, not the branch

Use the number printed on the back of your card or on the bank’s own website, never a number someone sent you. If you’re not sure the app or company you paid was real in the first place, our guide on how to tell whether a money app is legitimate covers what to check. Say whether the transaction was one you made or one you didn’t, because that’s what decides how your file gets handled. Ask them to attempt a recall on any transfer, freeze the affected account, and lock or reissue the card.

Write down everything before you delete it

Screenshots of the messages, the phone number, the email address, the website, the amounts, the exact times, and any reference numbers the bank gives you. Note who you spoke to and when. Complaints that go anywhere later are the ones with a paper trail from day one.

Report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and your local police

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (opens in a new tab) takes reports online or at 1-888-495-8501. It won’t refund you, and it doesn’t investigate your individual case, but it’s how the police spot patterns and how the national numbers exist at all. File the police report too. Some banks ask for a file number before they’ll open an investigation.

Put a fraud alert on your credit file

Call Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada and ask for a fraud alert. It’s free, it doesn’t affect your credit score, and it tells lenders to verify your identity before opening anything new. If the scammer collected your SIN, date of birth, or a photo of your ID, do this the same day.

Can an Interac e-Transfer be reversed?

Not once it’s been deposited. Interac’s own FAQ (opens in a new tab) says: “once a deposit has been made there is no way to reverse the transaction. You’ll have to make arrangements directly with the recipient.” If the transfer is still pending, you can cancel it yourself from your online banking. That window is often minutes.

Interception fraud is when you sent a legitimate transfer to a real person, and a criminal who had broken into an email account guessed the security question and took the money first. You never chose to pay a scammer, so it feels like plain theft.

Banks don’t always treat it that way, and this is where people get caught out. Bank guarantees are written around transactions you didn’t authorize, and you did authorize this one. The banking ombudsman’s published approach to fraud complaints (opens in a new tab) says it usually can’t recommend the bank pay compensation where the consumer shared access to their account, or where the consumer authorized the transaction, because the firm had no real chance to stop it. Some banks still help. CIBC says that if you’ve met your responsibilities to keep your account safe, it will help you get your money back (opens in a new tab), which is a commitment to help rather than a promise to refund. Report it fast, say the word “interception” on the call, and if you’re turned down, this is exactly the kind of case for the complaint process below.

If you paid by credit card for something that never arrived, you have a separate route that has nothing to do with fraud rules: a chargeback. Your issuer reverses the payment because the merchant didn’t deliver. There’s a deadline, so ask for the exact window on the same call. Interac Debit and e-Transfers have no equivalent, which is the practical reason to put anything you’re unsure about on a credit card.

What if the bank says no?

You escalate. There’s a formal route, and hardly anyone knows it’s there.

Start by making a formal complaint to the bank itself rather than arguing with the fraud line. Ask for it to be logged as a complaint and get a reference number. Under the federal complaint-handling rules (opens in a new tab), your bank has 56 days to deal with it. If it hasn’t resolved things by then, or resolves them in a way you don’t accept, you can take the file to the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments. Since November 1, 2024, OBSI has been the single external complaints body for every federally regulated bank (opens in a new tab), so there’s no longer a question of which office is yours. It’s free, and it can recommend compensation up to $350,000. Watch the clock at the other end too: once the bank sends its final written response, you have 180 days to bring the file to OBSI (opens in a new tab). Those timelines are for banks and federal credit unions. A provincial credit union or caisse gets 90 days to help you first, or 60 if you live in Quebec.

OBSI is also busy, and its own reporting is worth reading before you decide. In its 2025 annual report (opens in a new tab), OBSI said fraud was the leading issue in consumer banking complaints at a third of all banking cases, with fraud investigations nearly doubling to 1,815 from 966 the year before, though most of that jump came from OBSI taking on six more banks at the end of 2024. It also flagged what banks were doing wrong. Some customers were being held liable for transactions that happened while they were trying to report the fraud to the bank, which OBSI says federal law, provincial law, contract law or a voluntary code rules out. And some banks withdrew settlement or goodwill offers from customers who escalated, or warned them the offer would be pulled if they did.

That last one changes what you do next. If your bank has offered you part of your money and you’re weighing whether to push further, ask them in writing whether the offer stands if you go to OBSI, and keep the answer.

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s page on resolving an unauthorized transaction (opens in a new tab) is the clearest summary of your rights on the theft side, including the rule that your bank has to take all relevant factors into account before finding you at fault, whatever technology processed the transaction.

Watch out for the second scam

This is the part that catches people who have already been careful once. Fraudsters buy and trade lists of people who have lost money, then come back pretending to be investigators, lawyers, or recovery agents who can get it returned for a fee. The Ontario Securities Commission says recovery scams hit about one in three fraud victims (opens in a new tab).

It’s now organized enough that the criminals impersonate the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre itself, complete with fake letterhead. Canadians lost more than $28 million to fraud-investigator impersonation in 2025 (opens in a new tab), on top of $25.9 million to straight recovery pitches. The rule is short: if someone asks you to pay money to get money back, it’s a scam. The same tell shows up in prize and contest scams, where the fee is called a tax or a processing charge. No police force, no government agency, and no ombudsman charges you a fee, asks for remote access to your computer, or asks you to send funds as part of an operation.

Is anything changing?

Slowly. The United Kingdom made banks refund most victims of authorized-transfer scams in October 2024, up to £85,000, normally within five business days (opens in a new tab). Canada has no equivalent and isn’t proposing one.

What Ottawa did propose, in June 2026, is a set of anti-fraud amendments to the banking rules. Banks would have to review their fraud policies and procedures every year, let you switch off wire transfers, international money transfers and e-Transfers on your own account, and report to the FCAC how much they actually reimburse victims. That reporting duty is the interesting one, because for the first time someone in Ottawa would know how much each bank pays back. There’s still no mandatory reimbursement standard, and nothing here is settled: the comment period closed in July 2026, and if the rules are made they wouldn’t take effect before July 1, 2027 (opens in a new tab). Until then, the split at the top of this page is the law you’re working with.

Rebuilding the cushion afterwards

Losing money to fraud doesn’t mean you were careless. The scripts are professionally written, they arrive on the worst day of your week, and investment fraud alone accounts for about half of everything Canadians reported losing. Once the calls are made and the reports are filed, the only useful question left is how you rebuild a cushion.

That’s what Lodavo is built for. It’s a free Canadian app that makes saving something you look forward to instead of something you avoid. You connect the bank account you already have, track what you save each week, and every $25 of your balance earns you a ticket in a free weekly draw for prizes up to $10,000, with at least $100 going to a user every single week. Your savings stay in your own bank the whole time, which after a fraud is worth saying out loud.

Want a reason to keep the savings side moving? Download Lodavo free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) and start earning tickets for the weekly draw.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.