For myself
My family thinks I’m being scammed. I don’t.
You can run all of these checks yourself, without anyone’s permission, and each can come back either way.
- Have ready:
- the company’s name, the person’s name and number, and the details of any investment account.
- How long:
- about an hour by our estimate, then one request to withdraw your whole balance.
What would actually settle it
Check for yourself whether it’s a scam
Do each of the checks that follow, at a regulator or a registry, before you send any more money. The order is ours.
A search that can come back with a no tells you more than anyone’s opinion, including ours.
If this is about a person you met online rather than a company, the registration and company searches will not find them. How scams that begin with an online friendship usually run: Who the scammers invite you to be.
Why we think your family is worried
Your family is usually working from a few things they noticed:
- A name they had not heard.
- A call that ran long.
- A transfer on a statement.
- An evening on the phone instead of at dinner.
None of the things a family notices is evidence either way. From outside, an ordinary part of somebody’s life looks the same as something worth worrying about.
People also judge their own good news, such as a new plan, business or friend, less strictly than a stranger would.
Choose checks with a clear yes or no answer
In our view, scammers build most of what people are told to check so that it passes:
- Anyone can build a convincing website in a few days.
- The number on a call display costs nothing to fake.
- An account statement is only a document, and documents can be made up.
A clean result you were always going to get tells you nothing: Why they pass every check, and the one thing they cannot fake.
What a clean result is worth. A clean result from a regulator is worth something. One from a search engine is worth nothing, and you cannot hand it to anybody.
Check an investment is registered
The Canadian Securities Administrators, the umbrella body for the provincial commissions, run the national registration search at aretheyregistered.ca. In general, anyone who offers investment advice, sells securities, trades derivatives or manages an investment fund has to be registered, unless an exemption applies.
For one adviser, the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) runs an Advisor Report. It gives the background, qualifications and disciplinary record of an adviser at an investment dealer. It does not cover an adviser at a mutual fund dealer, or anyone who has left the industry.
What the national registration search comes back with
- Whether the individual or the firm is registered where you live, and in which other Canadian jurisdictions.
- The category, or categories, they are registered in.
- Whether there are terms or conditions attached to that registration.
What the search does not tell you
- Registration is per category. The person has to be permitted to sell the types of securities they are offering you, as Alberta’s commission puts it.
- Somebody banned does not appear at all. Individuals and firms banned from doing business in British Columbia do not show up in the search, says the British Columbia commission. They are on its Disciplined List instead.
More it cannot tell you
- Not everybody has to be registered. So a blank is a question rather than an answer.
- The search cannot tell you who you have been speaking to. It only matches a name to a record.
Call the firm on the number the registration search lists for it, not one the person sent you. Ask whether that person works there and whether they contacted you.
Search the regulators’ warning lists
Provincial commissions publish warning lists, such as Alberta’s Investment Caution List, which names companies and individuals that are not registered in Alberta. British Columbia’s is its Disciplined List.
A name on a warning list answers the question, in about a minute by our estimate. A missing name tells you nothing either way, because the lists hold what a regulator already knows about.
Check that the company exists under the name it is using
Corporations Canada calls its federal search the source to confirm that a corporation created under a federal corporate law exists. You can search by corporate name, corporation number or business number.
The federal search leaves out companies incorporated in a province, and banks and insurance companies too. For a provincial company, Corporations Canada points to Canada’s Business Registries, which is free to search and does not yet cover the whole country.
- What the federal record shows. The registered office address, the directors with an address each, and the people with significant control over the company. A dissolved or amalgamated corporation stays on the record, so a name there does not mean the company is still trading.
- Which registries Canada’s Business Registries draws on. British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, alongside the federal one. New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon are not in it yet.
If it finds nothing, or asks for money
- What an empty result is worth. Less than it looks, because a company registered where the search does not reach comes back blank too.
- If a registry asks for money. The search is free. Following a result through to the registry that holds it can mean an account or a fee, and that is ordinary.
- What a match does not tell you. Whether the corporation is the one described to you, or whether it is honest. A real corporation can still run a scam.
Call the company back on a number you look up yourself
When a caller says they are from your financial institution, your service provider, law enforcement or a government agency, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says to hang up and call the organization yourself. The Centre also says never to assume the number on your call display is accurate.
Securities regulators say to look up the contact details yourself for emails and texts too.
the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre where scams get reported nationally, which is not the same as being investigated
It gathers reports from across the country so that patterns can be seen. Your own case belongs to the local police force, and the Centre does not work it. It cannot move money either.
One number you can check. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) publishes a checker for the callback number an agent gives you. Hang up, then open its web page Verify it’s the CRA calling and type in the number: 1, then the ten digits. Do not dial it.
- What it covers. Numbers listed on the CRA website, and some common outbound program numbers.
- What it leaves out. Employees’ direct work numbers, so a number it cannot match is a question rather than a verdict.
- If the number does not match. The CRA says to call 1-800-959-8281 for individuals and trusts, or 1-800-959-5525 for businesses.
What the securities regulators never ask for
The securities regulators say they will never ask investors to send money anywhere at any time, or make unsolicited calls, emails or texts asking for payments to do with enforcement or investigations.
The regulators have published an alert about people using regulator branding, and the names of real executives, to ask for exactly that.
Ask to withdraw your whole balance from the investment
Ask for the whole balance in one request, not a test amount. Then judge by what comes back, not by what you are told about it.
If the whole balance arrives, that supports your view. If you are asked first for a fee, a tax, a form, a call with a manager or a better idea, that is a result too, and a warning.
Our reasoning, not a finding
Asking for the whole balance is our judgement: a small sum is much cheaper for anybody to produce than a large one. Reading a fee or a delay as a warning is our judgement too.
Offer your family a rule: never send money during a call
Never sending money during a call is roughly what your family was trying to say.
We never send money during a call. We call back on a number we already had.
What the rule does not ask of you
- Nothing about this investment or this person, and no admission either way.
- Nothing about how much. The same amount can go a day later, on a number you looked up.
- Nothing about being suspicious of anyone. It applies to a real company too, and a real company can wait a day.
- It binds everybody in the family, including whoever raised this with you.
Offering a household rule leaves much less to argue about than accepting your family’s verdict does.
The page written for your family is Every time I bring up scams with my parents, it turns into a fight. It tells them not to produce evidence and not to make it about you.
Common questions
What if I am right and they are wrong?
Then the searches show it: registered where you live, in the right category, no conditions on it, nothing on any list. The company also confirms the person when you call a number you looked up.
An answer from a regulator is worth more than your word against your family’s. It cost you nothing, and it belongs to you rather than to anybody who has been arguing with you.
Am I being talked to like a child?
Possibly, and only your family can say what they meant. In our view, a family’s worry often sounds like doubt that you can be trusted with your own money, even when nobody meant it that way.
None of these checks needs you to accept that, or needs your family to agree.
Who finds out that I looked?
Nobody is told about a search; you run it alone on a regulator’s website. A call to a firm tells only that firm.
What you found, whether you mention it, and to whom, stays your decision.
What if the answer is one I would rather not have?
Then you learn it privately, and before anyone else does, rather than in the middle of an argument you did not start.
If money has already moved, the calls to make first are on I think I have been scammed, and not one of them is to a relative.
They want me to stop speaking to this person. Do I have to?
No. None of these checks asks you to end anything, or to accept anyone’s account of what is going on.
Each check is a search or a telephone call.
What if the other person objects to me checking?
An objection is a result in itself.
A registered company expects to be looked up, and the regulators say that is what these searches are for. Somebody who takes checking badly has told you something the search could not.