49 Comments

Phil,

Report this attempt to FINTRAC:

https://fintrac-canafe.canada.ca/individuals-individus/rpt-eng

Also, contact the head of Financial Crime Compliance at the HQ of the bank that has it's branch in the Gatineau. If the branch manager isn't interested, his financial crime compliance team at his Bank HQ should be.

Good luck!

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So just as an FYI, when I go to Voluntary Report and I choose Web Form, it takes me to a page where they talk about how they're going to implement webforms. It indicates that FINTRAC's systems are temporarily unavailable.

If it wasn't so sad, I'd be giggling.... who am I kidding, I'm actually giggling.

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This makes me so mad.

Try filling this form out:

https://fintrac-canafe.canada.ca/reporting-declaration/form/STR-eng.pdf

And then call the number on the form "call FINTRAC’s toll-free enquiries line

at 1-866-346-8722 for any questions".

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Also here is how businesses can connect with CIBC's Financial Fraud group:

https://www.cibc.com/en/privacy-security/banking-fraud/report-fraud.html

As you say, are other illicit funds going into this bank account? The Bank must take action once a flag like this is raised. Go for it!

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Sent a note to CIBC's fraud address with all of the documentation I kept. Now we see if they respond.

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On behalf of all of us, don't give up. If you don't hear from CIBC or Fintrac, contact CBC. The CBC Ottawa newsdesk, or Marketplace, might find it an interesting story:

https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/forms/go-public/index_original.html#:~:text=You%20can%20email%20us%20directly,and%20you%20agree%20to%20participate.

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FINTRAC was subject to a cyberattack that took all their systems offline.

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Will do!

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... and please update us (in another column, perhaps?) with what, if any, response and action you get. I know I'd be interested in reading it!

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We had our trust account breached. 150K. A TD bank in Edmonton said the fraudster was in the bank trying to cash the cheque. We told the bank to call the police -- they refused and said it was a cost of doing business. We notified the Law Society that TD would refund the money, but the Law Society said the trust account must be balanced by the close of business. We had to scramble to our personal lines of credit to bring the account full, order new cheques, cancel other trust cheques sent to clients and law firms. It was disappointing to experience the "Do not Care" attitude of the Bank, let alone the police as no one gives two hoots about the cost to the consumer and business. We need a big re-think in policing, because monetary crime is real crime and the fraudsters just move on to the next victim.

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They say it is ‘victimless’ crime. We also need to redefine ‘victimless’.

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We need a police force that is dedicated to serious crime, where officers from a variety of educational and professional backgrounds are trained in investigative techniques and where how many push-ups you can do isn't considered a qualification. Start by removing federal policing from the RCMP and make it a new agency.

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Canadians need to actually display anger in response to the softening of the rule of law in Canada. The rule of law and respect for private property are the foundations of our individual liberty and way of life.

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Private property was explicitly excluded from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada and the rule of law is whatever our police and courts say they are, no what the public thinks they should be.

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This is no surprise. When the police will permit a rag tag bunch of protesters to bring the pride parade to an end, will permit a railway to be blocked for weeks, ignore injunctions, and allow the citizens of Caledonia to be terrorized... is it any surprise that the purported rule of law has become a joke? Unfortunately, the answer is political...you know, those politicians who solemnly said at the Rouleau Enquiry that they would never tell police what to do. So all you can do is write to the Solicitor General or it Quebec equivalent; and take the appropriate action to clean out the rot in Ottawa. Did you notice that the trespassers at Alberta universities were gone in a day, via effective police action?

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The same fraudster tried again this morning. It never ends.

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If you called the police again and said that "they said they have a gun" I wonder if that would motivate them?

I've heard it from a few now that you should always say "I think I heard gunshots" if you want a quick response.

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Canada is indeed broken :-(

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Canada has become one rather effed up country. Internationally known criminal money laundromat.

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Let's make the name and branch of the Bank public! CIBC in Gatineau was it?!

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I love the story, and hate the apathy. Do we care about anything anymore?

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Not surprisingly this laissez-faire attitude toward interference in Canadian affairs(fraud, banking, election interference, criminal gangs etc.) can be tracked directly to the PMO where Emperor Trudeau ignores anything that doesn’t comply with his narrow and entitled perspective.

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Anarcho-Tyranny : Law-abiding citizens stifled by increasingly burdensome taxes, rules, and regulations, while criminals have free reign

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Please keep pursuing this! Hope the mainstream media picks up on it…

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Infuriating.

But here's another angle to try: report this account to the CRA. It's a virtual certainty that these scammers aren't reporting their income or paying tax on it. Maybe the authorities don't give a shit if senior citizens are getting swindled out of their life-savings, but they'll sure as hell give a shit if they don't get their cut.

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Utterly maddening. Step #900 in how to erode public trust in the country.

That being said, I would love to see some old fashion journalism here. How does this response compare say to attempted crimes like this in the past. I know its hard to compare apples due to the nature of the crime, but If someone tried to rob a business at night and steal say, $5k in merchandise, what would the response have been ? I would like to think there would at least be some follow-up ?

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All I can tell you is that I'm not a journalist - I'm just a simple business owner who is fed up with the inability of our institutions to perform their most basic of duties.

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Same boat :( I work in IT and its a *constant* deluge of criminality, mostly overseas. That I can at least sort of understand. We are not gonna fly RCMP officers to some impoverished, but highly educated country on the other side of the planet assuming there even is some extradition treaty.

But even locally, I remember going to a anti fraud seminar by the local police. He had a story of a guy selling "magnetic mattresses" door to door. Spoiler alert. They didnt cure gout, nor did they actually exist. He would just pocket the deposit. This was the second time he was arrested. So what do you do with him ? Toss his ass in jail. Well, whats the cost to prosecute ? Whats the cost to incarcerate ? What is your current budget and how much court time is available and what other cases are competing for that court time. The cops and the crown he said would love to get the guy off the street, but they cant because they dont have the money for it. This was probably 12-15yrs ago now in Ontario. So he said he will no doubt be picked up for more "petty" fraud. Thats maddening, but are we going to allocate the resources to prosecute and keep the guy in jail ? I dunno, I hope so ? And no, this guy didnt sound like Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread because he was hungry, at least not how the cop described him.

Something has to change. Crime cannot go consequence free. Its just going to keep corroding society. But are the rest of us tax payers willing to pay those costs.

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They wouldn’t respond to that either. Don’t respond to 100k vehicles or pretty much anything else.

Perpetrators never see the inside of a jail so the cops don’t bother

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I am interested in comparing numbers to today vs say the 80s. Is it better, worse, about the same etc. Probably some criminologists have looked at this question.

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Welcome to reality. The police are not there to protect you - as tested in several court cases. They are only there to “enforce” the law - ask any abused partner or their grieving survivors who tried to get police protection beyond a piece of judicial paper, or the Ottawa freedom protesters a couple of winters ago who were charged by police warhorses. Unless you have means substantial enough to hire individuals- often the same police officers- to provide security for you. And don’t even think of trying to protect yourself or yours with any kind of weapon - you are threatening the police’s job security and like any unionized group they will come down upon you from great dewy heights, while the perp rattles off his childhood victim credentials to his state paid attorney and the nearest CBC reporter.

The officer was quite right - no crime, no action.

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A couple of years ago, someone set up a fake website in my business's name, apparently posted job ads about positions I was not offering, and proceeded to allegedly scam applicants out of a few hundred bucks under the pretence that they wanted them to front stationery costs related to the onboarding that they would reimburse later (these were low-level candidates fresh out of school, so no insignificant amount of money to them).

I would then receive calls or emails from the poor suckers on the verge of crying once I told them that they'd been scammed and that I couldn't do anything for them.

To this day, I still haven't figured out if the scam was the pretend position aimed at those hapless job-seekers or the pretend suckers crying on the phone hoping that I would feel bad enough about their predicament to refund them the money out of pocket (think of it as the inception of scams, aka a scam within a scam).

I did report the incident and the website to some federal online fraud agency or other and emailed the scammers letting them know that the jig was up. A few days later, the website disappeared.

The moral of the story is that one has to be very careful as some of those scams are very elaborate.

I felt bad for the applicants but I was hoping that the lesson would be learned when they realized that no one would bail them out.

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I just heard about these employment scams this morning on the radio. Very sad for the people looking for jobs.

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Another well known scam. "The budget will balance itself".

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