We do not look into what happened.
No investigating, no watching an account, no checking whether a company is real.
The Fraud Clinic · About us
A free guide to how fraud works, and what stops it.
We want you to find what is happening to you quickly, and to understand your options. Nothing here asks what you did.
Who we are, and why we built this.
We work in cybersecurity, in technology and in law enforcement. We are also grandchildren, and we are sick of people trying to take advantage of our families. This site speaks for us, not for any police service, bank or government.
This guide helps you with:
- Finding which stage of a scam you are in, and what you can do at that stage.
- Making it harder for a scammer to get to you in the first place.
This guide will not stop every scam. Scams are run as a business, and some will still get through.
More than one way in, all to the same pages.
There is no order and no wrong way in.
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Where to start
Pick the moment you are in, from getting a parent’s accounts ready to thinking you have been scammed.
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How scams work
What a scammer does at each stage, and what stops them there.
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Real stories
Scams that happened to people in Canada, as the news reported them, laid out step by step.
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Who to call
Every phone number and website on the site in one list, national first, then your province or territory.
Check a number before you call.
The numbers and hours on this site can change, so check an organization’s own website before you call.
Where a bank, a police service or a government page says something different from us, follow them.
Three things we will not do.
A site that offered to investigate, watch accounts or get money back would be selling something, and would look just like the people who call after a scam offering to get the money back.
We do not get money back.
We say who can try, and by when. You and your bank do the trying.
We do not know your case.
Every page here is general, and a rule in one province can differ in the next.