The total losses from fraud against individuals have soared to $16 billion in five years, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada (StatsCan).
The department asked questions on fraud for the first time in a General Social Survey (GSS) on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization), and examined the prevalence of self-reported fraud in Canada.
Of all the crimes measured by the survey, fraud was the most common, with over 5 million people aged 15 and older stating they had been a victim of at least one instance of fraud in the last five years. That works out to 17 percent of the population.
When asked if an individual had been the victim of fraud in the last 12-month period, close to 2.5 million of those aged 15 and older answered in the affirmative.
“This is more than for any other crime measured by the GSS. By comparison, it’s almost double the number of people (1.4 million people; 4.3 percent of the Canadian population) who have been victims of a violent crime, which includes sexual assault, robbery and assault,” said StatsCan.
Alberta has the highest amount of fraud, with 22 percent of individuals reporting they had been victimized by at least one fraud in the last five years before the survey.
People living in Nunavut (8.6 percent), New Brunswick (13 percent), Newfoundland and Labrador (13 percent), Nova Scotia (14 percent), and Quebec (14 percent) were less likely to report having been victims of fraud.
At the census metropolitan area level, those living in London (11 percent), Saskatoon (12 percent), Halifax (13 percent), and St. John’s (13 percent) were least likely to have been victims of fraud, while people living in Edmonton (24 percent), Victoria (23 percent), and Calgary (22 percent) were most likely.
The majority of fraud victims, 38 percent, reported they had no losses, while 16 percent lost less than $250. However, 3 percent of victims reported losses of more than $10,000 but less than $100,000, and 0.5 percent of victims said they had a loss of more than $100,000.
The average value of losses to fraud was more than $5,000, with the high losses of a few victims pushing up the average, and the median loss sitting at $600. Some of the victims reported they lost time in resolving the incident; for example, in nearly one in 10 instances, it took the individual more than a month to resolve the problems that resulted from the fraud they suffered.
The majority, 90 percent of fraud cases involved stolen personal information, but in many cases, the victims did not know how their information was obtained.
“Among fraud victims who know how their personal information had been obtained, many (39 percent) said that their credit or debit card had been cloned or copied, that access to one of their accounts (online, email) had been pirated (18 percent), that they themselves had provided the information (16 percent) or that the information had been obtained after a database breach or a data leak (10 percent),” said StatsCan.
Of the victims, 38 percent caught the fraud by looking at their bank or credit card statement, and 31 percent were contacted by their bank or credit card company.
Very few individuals reported the fraud to police—only 11 percent of victims. Another 7 percent reported it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
By comparison, 52 percent of motor vehicle thefts and 45 percent of break-and-enters are believed to have been reported to the police in 2019. The rate of reporting fraud to the police is closer to the rate for sexual assaults (6 percent). Conversely, many victims reported the fraud to the bank (65 percent), indicated StatsCan.
