How to Report a Scam in Canada — And Why It Matters Even If You Didn’t Lose Money
You almost fell for it. Or maybe you recognised it immediately and deleted it without a second thought. Either way, you didn’t lose any money — so there’s nothing to report, right?
Actually, there is. And reporting it may help the next person who gets the same call, text, or email — especially if they’re less sure what they’re looking at.
Here’s how the reporting process works in Canada, and why every report has value.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre: Where Reports Go
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) is the primary national body for collecting fraud reports from Canadians. It’s a joint operation involving the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Competition Bureau of Canada.
You can reach CAFC two ways:
- Phone: 1-888-495-8501
- Online: antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca
You can report by phone or by completing an online form. The online form lets you include attachments — screenshots, message records, and other documentation — which can be especially helpful for investigators looking at patterns.
In 2024, Canadians filed 108,878 reports with CAFC. The agency uses those reports to track scam patterns, issue public fraud alerts, and coordinate investigations with law enforcement across Canada and internationally.
What CAFC Does With Your Report
CAFC is honest about what it can and can’t do: it doesn’t investigate individual cases or guarantee money recovery. What it does is aggregate information.
When hundreds or thousands of people report the same phone number, the same email domain, the same script, or the same fraudulent “company name,” investigators can see a pattern that no single report would reveal. That pattern leads to public warnings, disruption operations, and in some cases arrests and prosecutions.
Your report — even if you lost nothing — is data. It might be the report that completes a pattern investigators have been watching for months.
Your Bank’s Fraud Department
If the scam involved your bank account, your credit card, or a payment service like Interac, your bank’s fraud department is also an important contact.
Call the fraud line for your financial institution (the number is on the back of your card or on their official website). Even if no money moved, your bank wants to know about attempts. They track fraud patterns too — and a record of the attempt protects you if someone tries to make an unauthorized transaction later and you need to establish a history of reported suspicious activity.
Provincial Consumer Protection Offices
Each province in Canada has a consumer protection office that handles complaints about fraudulent businesses operating locally. If the scam involved a company claiming to be based in your province, your provincial office is another avenue.
For Ontario, that’s the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery. For British Columbia, it’s Consumer Protection BC. A quick search for your province plus “consumer protection office” will find the right agency.
Provincial offices can issue warnings about businesses operating in their jurisdiction and can escalate to law enforcement if there’s a pattern of local fraud.
What to Have Ready When You Report
The more detail you can provide, the more useful your report. Before you sit down to file:
- Note the date and time the contact occurred
- Record any phone numbers, email addresses, websites, or social media accounts involved
- Save any messages, screenshots, or documents related to the scam
- Write down what was said or claimed — the scenario the scammer used
You don’t need all of this to file a report. Something is better than nothing. But if you have documentation, include it.
The One Reason People Don’t Report — And Why to Do It Anyway
Many people who are targeted by scams don’t report because they feel embarrassed, or because they think “nothing happened” means there’s nothing to say. Neither of those things makes a report less valuable.
Embarrassment is an understandable response to something designed to manipulate you. But CAFC staff deal with these reports every day — there is no judgment in that process. And “nothing happened” to you is precisely the kind of report that helps the next person, because it means the tactic is still in circulation.
One Thing to Do
If you’ve been targeted by a scam — even one you caught in time — go to antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca and file a report. It takes about five minutes. The information you provide helps CAFC track active scams and protect other Canadians.
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre: 1-888-495-8501 or antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca. Reports are accepted 24 hours a day online.