How to report a crypto scam in Canada

If you were scammed out of cryptocurrency in Canada, do two things today: report it to your local police service, and record the wallet addresses publicly.

Then report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre as well. Both matter, and they are not the same act — a point the CAFC makes itself: "It's the role of your local police to investigate. The CAFC assists law enforcement through maintaining a central repository of information to assist with investigations."

The first hours carry the most weight. The sooner the addresses and hashes are documented, the better the chance an exchange freezes the funds before they scatter.

Key takeaways

• Report to your local police service first. The CAFC tells you to "contact your local police as soon as possible" and to "get a file number for future reference."
• In most of Canada your local police service is the RCMP — it holds contract policing in eight provinces, three territories and some 150 municipalities. Ontario and Quebec are the exceptions.
• Then report to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) through the National Cybercrime and Fraud Reporting System at reportcyberandfraud.canada.ca, or 1-888-495-8501 (Monday to Friday, 10 am to 4:45 pm Eastern).
• FINTRAC is not a fraud line. Canada's financial intelligence unit does not investigate crimes, handle victim cases, or recover funds.
• Your provincial or territorial securities regulator can investigate and sanction, but the Canadian Securities Administrators state that regulators "normally do not recover money for investors."
• The CAFC's own step order puts your financial institution before the police call. Follow it.

What to do in the first hours

Stop sending money. Almost every victim makes one last payment because a "tax," a "withdrawal fee," or a "verification deposit" is supposedly all that stands between them and their balance. That money never comes back.

If you installed remote-access software so an "advisor" could set up your account, uninstall it now, change your passwords, and check your online banking.

If you handed over a seed phrase, recovery phrase, or private key, treat every wallet it controls as theirs and move what is left to a wallet you set up yourself.

Then, in this order:

1. Copy the destination address and the transaction ID (TXID) for every transfer, from your wallet history or your exchange's transaction log. This is the most useful thing in the report.
2. Screenshot everything before it disappears. Full Telegram, WhatsApp, and dating-app threads, uncropped. The profile, the platform's website, the dashboard showing your fake gains. These sites go dark within days.
3. Contact the financial institution that transferred the money. The CAFC lists this ahead of the police call, and it is right — your bank or credit union can flag or stop a payment inside the window. Ask their dispute deadline.
4. Notify the exchange you bought or sent from, so they flag the receiving address and preserve their records.
5. Call your local police service, then report to the CAFC. Ask for your file number and write it down.

Where to report

Your local police service

This is the step that opens an investigation. The CAFC's reporting page says it directly: "If you have been a victim of fraud or cybercrime, please contact your local police as soon as possible."

Ask for the file number before you hang up — the CAFC's victim guidance tells you to "get a file number for future reference."

For most Canadians, "local police" and "the RCMP" name the same detachment. The RCMP holds contract policing in eight provinces, three territories and some 150 municipalities; only Ontario and Quebec have their own provincial police service. If there is an RCMP detachment in your town, that is where the report gets filed.

Bring the documentation printed or on a drive. "I was scammed online" supports nothing.

Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre — reportcyberandfraud.canada.ca

The CAFC is Canada's central fraud repository, jointly operated by the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Competition Bureau. One filing through the National Cybercrime and Fraud Reporting System reaches the RCMP, the National Cybercrime Coordination Centre (NC3) and the CAFC.

Online is faster and open at any hour. By phone, 1-888-495-8501, Monday to Friday, 10 am to 4:45 pm Eastern, closed on holidays.

You can report anonymously. That still feeds the national picture — but nobody can come back to you for the detail that makes a report actionable.

The system has an Update a report function, and the CAFC asks you to "share any updates with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, your financial institutions and police." Most people file once and never return.

Your provincial or territorial securities regulator

If the scheme was sold as an investment — a trading platform, a managed crypto fund, a "signals" group promising guaranteed returns, or the romance-plus-investment pattern the CAFC calls "pig butchering" — report it to the securities regulator for your province or territory. The CAFC says the same: check the investment "with your provincial/territorial securities regulators."

Note the word regulator, not commission. Thirteen bodies cover Canada and most are not commissions — Quebec's is the Autorité des marchés financiers, and the territories and Newfoundland and Labrador run superintendent's offices. The CSA lists all thirteen.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. The CSA states that regulators "normally do not recover money for investors" and cannot "undo a transaction" or "make a complaint on your behalf." They investigate and sanction, and can sometimes order a respondent to repay investors. They will not chase your transfer.

What documentation to gather

• Every destination wallet address, and the TXID for each transaction with date and time
• Amounts and the exact asset — USDT on Tron is not USDT on Ethereum
• Uncropped screenshots of the full conversation, first contact to last
• The exact URLs of the platform, the ad, and the profile
• Bank and credit union statements, e-transfer records, exchange receipts
• Names, phone numbers, emails, and handles the scammer used
• A written timeline, and your police file number once you have it

Check before you transfer

Registration catches most of these before the money moves. Two free national tools:

• The National Registration Search, the CSA's registration lookup, at aretheyregistered.ca. Securities professionals must be registered in every province or territory where they do business, so a firm that claims registration and cannot be found has answered your question.
• The CSA's investor alerts, a searchable national list of "persons or companies who appear to be engaging in securities activities that may pose a risk to investors." Thousands of entries, and the recent ones are overwhelmingly fake crypto trading platforms — including copycats borrowing the name of a real exchange.

Between 5 June 2025 and 12 February 2026, CSA members deactivated more than 7,586 fake investment platforms and crypto scam websites, across more than 13,000 URLs. If the site you are looking at feels professionally built, that means nothing.

Why FINTRAC is not the place

This one sends people in the wrong direction constantly, partly because fraudsters invoke FINTRAC's name on purpose.

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada is the country's financial intelligence unit and anti-money-laundering supervisor. It makes sure regulated businesses meet their reporting obligations and produces intelligence for law enforcement. It does accept voluntary information from the public about suspected money laundering, which is where the confusion starts.

What it does not do is investigate crimes, take fraud complaints from victims, or return money. Its tool against a non-compliant business is an administrative monetary penalty — not a criminal charge, and not a refund.

If someone claiming to be from FINTRAC contacts you about your lost funds, that is a scam, not a case update.

Can I get my money back?

Sometimes. Far less often than the ads suggest.

It turns on one question: do the funds reach a service with compliance obligations — a centralized exchange, a payment processor, a stablecoin issuer — before they scatter? If they do, and a police report exists, there is a path. Through mixers, or into chains where nobody cooperates, it narrows to almost nothing.

Nobody can quote you odds honestly. Someone who does it over the phone is selling you something.

Beware of "fund recovery" offers

The CAFC has a name for this: the recovery pitch, one of the fraud types in its own A-Z index. Its warning is blunt: "Fraudsters often target victims of fraud a second or third time with the promise of recovering money. Always do your due diligence and never send recovery money."

Two details are worth knowing. The operators find previous victims deliberately, including by search engine optimization — so the page you land on while looking for help may itself be the second scam. And one variant asks for your help with a "sting" operation against the fraudsters who took your money. There is no sting.

Both the CAFC and the securities regulators have warned that fraudsters impersonate them — CAFC letterhead and logo, or fake contracts and receipts carrying CSA branding with QR codes to lookalike domains. The CAFC and police "will never ask you to transfer funds or make a payment of any kind," and the CSA and its members cannot "request or approve money or cryptocurrency transfers."

The signs do not change:

• They contacted you
• They want money before doing anything
• They guarantee the outcome
• They claim inside contacts at a police service, a regulator, or an exchange

If a caller claims to be any of those, hang up and call back on a number you looked up yourself.

Why record the address publicly

A criminal investigation moves at the speed of a criminal investigation. A public record works the moment you post it.

Record the address, the transaction hash, and the website on Chainabuse and that entry is visible to exchange compliance teams, to investigators, and to anyone who searches that name or address before sending money. It is free, and it aggregates reports against one address — so isolated cases turn into a visible pattern.

Often the person who benefits is not the one who reported. It is the one who searches two weeks later and finds the warning.

Frequently asked questions

1. Where do I report a crypto scam in Canada?

Report it to your local police service first, then to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at reportcyberandfraud.canada.ca or 1-888-495-8501. If the scheme was sold as an investment, also report it to your provincial or territorial securities regulator.

2. Does reporting to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre count as a police report?

No. The CAFC maintains a central repository that supports investigations, and tells victims to contact their local police as soon as possible. It is your local police service that investigates and issues a file number.

3. Should I report to the RCMP or to my local police?

For most Canadians they are the same thing. The RCMP holds contract policing in eight provinces, three territories and some 150 municipalities, so its detachment is the local police service; only Ontario and Quebec have their own provincial force. A report through the national system also reaches the RCMP and NC3.

4. Can FINTRAC help me get my cryptocurrency back?

No. FINTRAC is Canada's financial intelligence unit and anti-money-laundering supervisor. It does not investigate crimes, take fraud complaints from victims, or recover funds. Anyone contacting you as FINTRAC about your lost money is a fraudster.

5. What information do I need to file a useful report?

The destination wallet addresses, the TXID for each transaction with its date and time, the amounts and exact assets, uncropped screenshots of the full conversation, the platform's URLs, and your bank and exchange records.

6. Will my provincial securities commission get my money back?

Not directly. The Canadian Securities Administrators state that regulators "normally do not recover money for investors" and cannot undo a transaction or make a complaint for you. Report it anyway — it is how unregistered platforms get shut down.

7. Does reporting on Chainabuse replace the police report?

No — do both. The police report opens the investigation. The Chainabuse report makes the address immediately visible to exchanges and investigators worldwide, which is what stops the next transfer.